There once was a polar bear – science vs the blogosphere

Blogs on which man-made climate change and its impacts are downplayed are far removed from the scientific literature. That is the conclusion of a new article in Bioscience in which a variety of blogs was compared with the scientific literature regarding the shrinking Arctic sea ice and the impact on polar bears.

Jeff Harvey, a Canadian ecologist working at the Netherlands Institute for Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and the Free University of Amsterdam (VU), set out to investigate how the information on blogs relates to the scientific literature. The focus was on conclusions about Arctic sea ice and polar bears. The results have been published in the article “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy” in the journal Bioscience. Disclaimer: I’m a co-author of said article.

So what did we find? There is a clear separation amongst blogs, where approximately half of the 90 blogs investigated agree with the majority of the scientific literature, whereas other blogs took a position that is diametrically opposed to the scientific conclusions. Most of the blogs in the latter group based their opinions on one and the same source: Susan Crockford.

90 blogs and 92 scientific articles were classified according to six statements about Arctic sea ice and polar bears and the citation of Crockford. The figure shows the results of a principal component analysis (PCA) of the results. PCA is a technique to show the maximum amount of variation in a dataset with a minimum of newly defined parameters, the so-called principal components. The score on PC1 shows a separation between on the one hand the position that Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking and that this poses a threat to polar bears (most scientific articles and science-based blogs) and on the other side the position that Arctic sea ice is not shrinking or that it’s due to natural variability and that polar bears are not threatened (pseudo-skeptical blogs).

Arctic Sea ice

Arctic sea ice has shrunk dramatically in the past few decades, both in surface area and in thickness. This trend is expected to continue with ongoing global warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. Of course the decrease in sea ice doesn’t happen monotonically, but rather with ups and downs as a result of natural variability. When it happens to fit their perspective, such short term fluctuations are framed as a ‘recovery’ on certain blogs, or the decrease in Arctic sea ice is downplayed in other ways.

Polar bears

Polar bears depend on sea ice for catching their main prey, seals. So their habitat literally melts away as temperatures rise. Over time, polar bears have become iconic symbols of the negative effects of global warming. The population has been relatively stable so far, but you can’t just extrapolate that to the future. Biological impacts are often non-linear, and their dependence on sea ice means that in the future polar bears will likely face difficulties from continuing warming trend. Indeed, they have been classified as ‘vulnerable’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and as ‘threatened’ under the US Endangered Species Act.

“No climate report is complete without an obligatory photo of a polar bear balancing on a piece of ice”, John Oliver said in the famous 97% episode of “Last Week Tonight”.

But what about the previous interglacial?

The polar bear species has survived the previous interglacial ~125,000 years ago. Some deduce from that that the polar bear will be fine. However, if CO2 emissions aren’t drastically reduced temperatures will get a lot warmer over the coming centuries and even millennia than during the previous interglacial. Moreover, during the previous interglacial summers were probably not completely ice-free, as is expected to happen later this century as a consequence of continuing warming (which of course depends on how global emissions evolve). The current warming trend is many times faster than back then, making potential adaptation to new conditions more difficult. Besides shrinking sea ice there are currently also other factors that negatively affect polar bears, such as human settlements, industrial activities, hunting, bio-accumulation of toxins, and smaller seal populations.

Blogs

A future with ‘business as usual’ emissions doesn’t look bright for the polar bear. Blogs appear to fall into two camps in how they write about this topic. On pseudo-skeptical blogs scientific uncertainty is twisted into ignorance, or the current situation is extrapolated into the future without taking into account the available knowledge of polar bear ecology. They usually don’t base themselves on the scientific literature, but rather on the statements of one person. These rather unfounded opinions are consequently recycled via the blogosphere, which in this respect acts as an echo-chamber. Susan Crockford writes a lot about polar bears, but does so mostly on her own website and for anti-mitigation thinktanks such as the Heartland Institute and the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); not in the scientific literature.

The gap between scientific conclusions and pseudo-skeptical blogs will not be a great surprise to those who closely follow both the scientific and the public debate about climate change. After all, this tendency is more generally visible than only on the topic of Arctic sea ice and polar bears. This is however the first time that this has been demonstrated on the basis of a systematic comparison between the scientific literature and blogs. To close the consensus gap the authors call on their fellow scientists to actively participate in the public debate.

The Supplementary Information that was part of the paper submission is still not available on the OUP website despite our repeated request to do so asap. In the meantime you may download the SI here. The data (scores per blog and per scientific article) are available via Dryad.

There has been quite some media attention for this study. Below an incomplete listing (for Dutch pieces see the abovementioned link to my Dutch sister-blog).

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This entry was posted on November 29, 2017 at 19:07 and is filed under climate effects, English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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289 Responses to “There once was a polar bear – science vs the blogosphere”

As with most things climate change, if you pay attention to and understand the basic background information, you are scared witless. The ice is shrinking at times of the year when the bears need it and more. OTOH, if all you see is the part of the present, why, nothing to worry about, some of the population is shrinking, some growing and most are unsurveyed. It’s an intelligence test and the Crockford’s of the world are failing.

They’re not really uncertain. The purported uncertainty is a cover for being actually pretty certain that global warming won’t be as bad as scientists say.

The “uncertainty” is used as an epistemological slide:

– “Look, maybe climate change won’t be not that bad.”

–> “Those greens are pushing certainty, though. Hmm, what agenda do they have.”

–> “Hey, maybe the whole thing is just an elaborate excuse to take *your* money, hardworking citizen”.

So, the uncertainty over the issue becomes one-sided. It’s an excuse to look for any reason to avoid doing anything about climate change, rather than being an actual, genuine consideration of scientific uncertainty. As such, it comes from more of an emotional place rather than a logical one.

I see only one clear “falsehood” in the paper: “Crockford vigorously criticizes, without supporting evidence, the findings of several leading researchers who have studied polar bears in the field for decades.”

She provides much evidence, as is obvious to anyone who looks at her website or paper about polar bears. Perhaps the evidence is inadequate to support her conclusions. Or her analysis is flawed. But that she cites relevant evidence is a fact.

I question a second statement, for which the authors give no citation and I’ve never seen even mentioned by her — the second clause in this:

“A primary approach of Crockford’s and other denier blogs is to frame uncertainty by focusing on the present and to question the accuracy of future predictions — implying that the rapid loss of Arctic ice recorded over the past 40 years induced by AGW cannot serve as a guide to future conditions.”

The rest of my observations concern analysis in the paper. Some of it appears incorrect, and should have been caught by even cursory peer-review.

I don’t see anything in the FabiusMaximus post that addresses the key points of this paper: that the public opinion on climate change is bifurcated, that this bifurcation is not present to the same degree in the scientific community.

In other words, part of the public lines up with the bulk of the scientific community, and the other part of the public does not.

Re: your “I don’t see anything in the FabiusMaximus post that addresses the key points of this paper:”

Summary.

(1) The framing of the issue is weak, to be charitable. I give several examples.

(2) The paper defines “blog” (giving an incorrect citation) — but fails to define the terms central to its analysis: “denier”, “science denier”, “climate change denier”, and “AGW-denier.” Worse, they use these very different terms interchangeably. Even cursory peer review should have caught this.

(3) The middle of the paper examines a specific “denier”, whose background they misrepresent and whose work they describe in a materially false manner. I provide specifics for this. Peer review should have caught this.

(4) The last part of the paper describes an analytical method about which they provide only a sketch. No supplement is provided listing the websites examined or the methodology used. Given the quality of the description of Crockford’s Polar Bear Science website, these conclusions should be regarded as suspect — at best.

As windchaser says, the main conclusion of our paper is that blogs which downplay AGW largely ignore the primary scientific literature.

The criticism by Larry Kummer doesn’t materially impact this conclusion.

Re the points Larry raises:

There is a supplemental information accompanying the paper, which is not on the journal website yet; I don’t know why not. It should hopefully be published there soon, and/or on the lead institute’s website (NIOO).

The abstract of the paper mentions “blogs that deny or downplay AGW”; those blogs are subsequently referred to as denier blogs.

In the (as of yet unavailable) SI it says: “Blogs were assigned ‘science-based’ and ‘denier’ categories on the basis of their positions taken relative to those drawn by the IPCC on global warming (e.g. whether it is warming or not and the anthropogenic contribution).”

Re the characterization of Crockford in our paper we may have to agree to disagree. Harvey comments more about this in the discussion on SkS, where this blog has been cross-posted https://skepticalscience.com/polar-bear-science-vs-blogosphere.html She’s not the world class expert on *polar bear ecology* that she makes herself out to be.

Tom: Please tone down your language. This paper has nothing to do with “excommunicating their opponents from the climate discussion”, but rather with showing how blogs that routinely downplay AGW are far removed from the scientific literature, despite their claims to be science-based.

Kummer claims “This is a serious misrepresentation of relevant facts” regarding the paper’s representation of Crockford’s expertise (specifically: “Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears”).

As evidence that this is supposedly a misrepresentation, Kummer states that Crockford *mentions* polar bear evolution in her PhD thesis and he refers us to her “peer reviewed publications”.

There are two things any competent scientist with research experience would note:

First, mentioning polar bear evolution in any writing does not equate conducting original research on polar bear evolution, nor does it equate to publishing articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.

Second, the list of “peer-reviewed publications” actually contains a lot of publications that are not peer reviewed. Most damningly, there are in essence only two “publications” that directly address polar bears…but these are comments Crockford managed to make on the Publisher’s websites. These are not peer-reviewed publications.

Kummer should also get himself some glasses: he makes much out of Crockford supposedly being cited in a paper in Bioscience, and links to a paper that cites…a 1996 paper from Nicola Crockford, not Susan Crockford. But even if it did cite Susan Crockford, who cares? It was about *fowl*, not polar bears.

Finally, Kummer also makes much of a Peer J preprint (which has been a preprint since March 2017, rather long – maybe she never submitted it), but that paper is a prime example of Crockford using *present* conditions to claim *future* predictions are wrong.

You ignore my most serious criticism: the paper materially misrepresents the content of her blog. Some of your statements are obviously false. Another key one is unsupported (and so far as I can tell, false).

Your paper focuses on one website, whose content you have misrepresented. That is the basis for my statement that whatever blog coding you have done should not be taken seriously until reviewed.

Larry, I think Marco has replied in detail to your point re Crockford, as did Jeff Harvey over at SkS.

You ask: “Downplaying” vs. what?

vs IPCC, as I mentioned in my previous comment. You know as well as I do that most climate blogs fall into either an “anti-IPCC” or a “pro-IPCC” approach. Blogs tend to be the most polarized (and polerizing?) medium in this polarized debate.

(3) “that paper is a prime example of Crockford using *present* conditions to claim *future* predictions are wrong.”

That is not a relevant rebuttal. The Bioscience paper claims that she presents no evidence. Her preprint — and website — give evidence. As I said: “One can question her evidence and logic, but not that she provides much evidence.”

You point to the abstract as giving a definition. It says only “Here, focusing on Arctic sea ice and polar bears, we show that blogs that deny or downplay AGW …” It does not mention the IPCC.

There is no definition in the paper of “denier”, “science denier”, “climate change denier”, and “AGW-denier.” Also, you use these quite different terms interchangeably.

(2) “You know as well as I do that most climate blogs fall into either an “anti-IPCC” or a “pro-IPCC” approach.”

(a) The “you know” defense wouldn’t fly for an undergraduate’s term paper. A paper should define its key terms, unless they are standard.

(b) The paper makes no effort to show how Crockford’s writings disagree with the IPCC’s conclusions. Many of the papers assertions about her work are false or unsupported.

(3) “I think Marco has replied in detail to your point re Crockford, as did Jeff Harvey over at SkS.”

Yes, they state that a PhD in zoology is not a relevant background to write about polar bears. I suspect that many scientists writing about polar bears have PhDs in zoology, and would find Marco’s assertion bizarre.

Whether it is a *sufficient* background is a different question, which the paper legitimately raises. Doing so without mentioning her PhD is a material omission.

“Yes, they state that a PhD in zoology is not a relevant background to write about polar bears”

Neither I nor Jeff Harvey make this claim. You complain about people misrepresenting someone’s expertise, and you do so by misrepresenting what they write!

“The most important omission is her PhD in zoology, and peer-reviewed publications in that field — which are to some degree relevant when talking about polar bears.”

It isn’t relevant. The relevant issue is that certain blogs rely on one single source, which cannot even document any relevant scientific expertise on polar bears. It doesn’t matter whether she has, or does not have, an education that may possibly make it easier for her to understand the literature on that topic, the fact remains that she does not have any documented expertise on polar bear habitats and behavior. Period.

A zoologists opinion on dog evolution should not be taken serious if that zoologist has no documented scientific expertise in the field of dog evolution (or even mammal evolution), and yet claims to know better than those working on a daily basis in that field. I would be very surprised if Jeff Harvey would feel comfortable making a website about dog evolution in which he contradicts what the vast, vast majority of those with scientific papers on dog evolution are saying, while he has none to his name, but let’s assume he would: I am certain Susan Crockford would call people who rely on his writings seriously deluded and point out her own documented expertise in the field.

Tom Fuller, elsewhere, claims “The paper flat out lies about Crockford’s publication record, saying “Notably, as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.” Crockford’s publications are listed here and include papers published in Oxford, British Archaeological Reports, Canadian Journal of Zoology and International Journal of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, among many others.”

As already noted here, none of these papers are on polar bears. In other words, Tom Fuller flat out lies about the paper misrepresenting Crockford’s publication record.

I am sure Tom will correct this (one of many) errors, and I am sure Tom will acknowledge his piece was a hit job on Jeff Harvey and Stephan Lewandowsky, so in reality he doesn’t actually mind personal hit jobs…as long as they are aimed at the people he dislikes.

No Marco, I won’t. Are you an author on this paper? You write ‘Neither I nor Jeff Harvey make that claim.’

Crockford has had extensive comments on polar bears published in high impact journals. Given what the Konsensus has done for the reputation of peer review that should be sufficient.

And it should have been noted.

This paper really is a hit job–I’m not being metaphorical. Crockford was in an argument with one of the paper’s authors, Steven Armstrup. She wiped the floor with him and this paper is obviously the cheap and underhanded retaliation we have come to expect from the Crusher Crew.

Other ways we know it’s a hit job: Release of the letter without the Si, something Bart Verheggen could do in a second on this blog. Equating the paper’s opponents with thugs claiming the Holocaust never occurred (and then amazingly calling for civility in the discussion that follows…) A complete lack of reference to the large body of published work on Social Network Analysis–the subject of the paper was obviously not nearly as important as going after Crockford.

And again, why Crockford? Why not Curry? She’s also a woman. Why not Donna LaFramboise? She’s also a woman. Why not Jennifer Marohasy? She’s a woman too.

This is an attempt to smear Crockford by someone she destroyed in another internet venue. I’m not surprised Lewandowsky signed up for it–he’s game for all sorts of idiotic nonsense.

Yes, Jeff transforms into any anything he wants, convenient to the subject matter at hand. When criticizing Lomborg he is an ecologist. On the subject matter of the Amazon, he is a biologist. Now, he is a zoologist.

Shouldn’t you have to be a subject matter expert to be taking issue with another person who actually has some expertise in the matter, how much of it you denigrate notwithstanding?

This looks to me like a scientific dispute about polar bears. The place for that is in the technical literature. What could possibly motivate one to respond with a paper that deals in other extraneous and politicized issues? This question gives credence to the theory that the paper is a smear of Dr. Crockford. This kind of paper is not really about science, its about analyzing the political and scientific aspects of the climate change dispute. I am surprised Bart that you would stoop to this kind of thing. Why is it relevant to the polar bear dispute?

I realize that several people get worked up about this article. Let me restate what the main message is:

Blogs play an important and influential role in the public debate about climate change. We analyzed how blogs portray one small but iconic aspect of climate change, and they appear to fall into two distinct groups, where one group by and large agrees with the scientific literature on the subject, and another group doesn’t at all. The latter group claims to be science-based, or even superior to mainstream science, which makes the almost zero-overlap with the scientific literature even more relevant. The majority of the latter group seems to base their opinions on one particular source, whose scientific credibility in this topic isn’t very high. The dynamic described may very well contribute to the ‘consensus gap’: the divergence in viewpoints about climate science between scientists and the general public.

The paper is first and foremost a characterization of the blogosphere.

“Crockford has had extensive comments on polar bears published in high impact journals.”

No she hasn’t. She highlights two comments made on the Publisher’s website. These are NOT “extensive”, nor are they *in* “high impact journals”. Here’s what Science has to say about the comments made on their webpage (Crockford highlights a comment she made on the science website):http://www.comments.sciencemag.org/
“Comments will be posted at the editors’ discretion. Comments are not reviewed, and they may or may not be edited for style and clarity. Authors are not contacted before posting. To avoid restating points that have already been made, please read other responses before submitting your own. Only comments in English will be posted. Your name and e-mail address are required to post a response.
Comments are not indexed in search engines such as Medline, and they are not listed in the Science Table of Contents.”

“When criticizing Lomborg he is an ecologist. On the subject matter of the Amazon, he is a biologist. Now, he is a zoologist.”

Ecology: “Ecology is the study of the relationships of organisms to their physical environment and to one another”

Zoology: “Zoology or animal biology is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems.”

Biology: “Biology is the natural science that involves the study of life and living organisms, including their physical and chemical structure, function, development and evolution.”

Since Jeff Harvey indeed is an ecologist, he indeed is a zoologist (beyond the fact his BSc degree is in zoology), and indeed a biologist.

None of the assessments and assertions performed in the paper can be objectively valid, if
A) the authors are themselves not polar bear experts, or
B) the persons whose work is criticized by Crockford are authors of the paper

A) is true to a large extent. Several authors on this paper are not polar bear experts. Being a zoologist-ecologist-biologist shapeshifter doesn’t count. Jeff Harvey is a blog commenter, denigrating another blog via a peer-reviewed article, that is all.

B) is true as it amounts to Stirling and Amstrup, polar bear experts both, declaring their own views to be ‘mainstream’ and anyone critiquing their work to be ‘deniers.’ A declaration of what constitutes ‘mainstream’ would carry some weight if performed by people whose own publications were not in question.

Susan Crockford has commented on polar bears on her blog recently. I remember a time when her blog didn’t exist and polar bear statistics, population distributions and controversies were discussed back then as well.

OK Bart, But the question remains unanswered. Your article is a de facto attack on the expertise of a fellow scientist. You did this without in any way addressing the underlying scientific issues about polar bears. The scientist you smear is very upset by this non-scientific attack. Looks like a classical political smear to me.

If I may disagree with several commenters, this paper is not about polar bears at all. It is about social networking–which blogs other bloggers link to for support and consider as validating for their point of view.

The fight about credentials is tangential to this issue–although the paper again is wrong and foolish on the subject, as one of the paper’s authors has exactly the same credential from the same university as Dr. Crockford.

There is a body of work on Social Network Analysis that was not cited and clearly not consulted in the preparation of this paper, leading to my concerns that this is more personally motivated.

One of the authors engaged in an online fight with Dr. Crockford some months back. Dr. Crockford apparently got the better of the fight and this paper seems like nothing more than the academic version of revenge porn.

Indeed, if there is anything at all of value in this paper, we are unable to find it without the SI.

It is in tone and content very similar to the junk science put out at regular intervals by Stefan Lewandowski, one of this paper’s authors and, as I have said, is intended not to communicate but excommunicate.

The most surprising feature of this paper is in fact the participation of one Bart Verheggen, something I regret very much and which I venture to guess Bart Verheggen will too, some day.

Stephen Schneider put his imprint on a piece of junk science shortly before his death–Anderegg, Prall et al PNAS 2010. That paper, dismissed by no less than Spencer Weart on the day of its publication, serves as a sad coda to a distinguished career.

I hope this paper does not serve as a blight on your own, Bart.

You have the SI. You can publish it now. I call for you to do so.

But then, I asked 5 times for the data for Verheggen et al 2013 and you didn’t provide it. I guess that openness in science only goes so far.

“None of the assessments and assertions performed in the paper can be objectively valid, if
A) the authors are themselves not polar bear experts”

You do not need to be an expert on polar bears to note that certain websites only cite a single source, who happens to have zero peer-reviewed scientific publications on polar bear habitats and behavior, whereas other blogs *do* cite the primary literature on the topic.

“You do not need to be an expert on polar bears to note that certain websites only cite a single source, who happens to have zero peer-reviewed scientific publications on polar bear habitats and behavior, whereas other blogs *do* cite the primary literature on the topic.”

Why leave it hanging? Only valid if the purported single source did not cite literature on the topic.

Some of your comments landed in automatic moderation because of some derogatory words that I’ve listed as to-be-moderated. I’ll leave it to your creativity to figure out which ones, which at the same time hopefully serves as a reminder to keep your tone respectful.

You have done zero effort to understand our article. Instead you’re making up stuff about it being misogynistic. Please get a grip.

“This ad hominem argument would be relevant if the assessments and assertions performed in the paper would be about bears.

I don’t think they are.”

They are relevant because the argument is not ad hominem. It is not ad hominem to point out that the authors are not polar bear experts themselves. The paper is a set of people complaining, pointing out, that a variety of sources and legislators rely on the interpretations of one non-expert person, when neither the people and the person in question are polar bear experts. However, additionally, the person criticized though not a ‘subject expert’ by commonly accepted defintion, possesses greater expertise and knowledge on the matter than those who bothered enough to complain.

In effect, the first argument of the paper is a lament on the state of the discourse surrounding polar bears. Contrary to the authors notions, one group or sect – however scientifically authoritative they may be – does not and cannot control an organic and emergent process such as the state of the debate and accepted ground truths of the day.

It is the not the fault of the contrarian if the world around them finds their arguments convincing.

Amustrup and Stirling, as co-authors, provide cover for the non-experts to go after the dissident as they themselves cannot claim that the non-expert has committed an intellectual sin by not exclusively propogating their own scientific views on polar bears. That would seem ridiculous, and undignified.

> It is not ad hominem to point out that the authors are not polar bear experts themselves.

Indeed it is, Shub. Whether it’s valid in our case is another question we need to set aside, because your argument is irrelevant in either case. The paper just ain’t about polar bears, but about how contrarian blogs operate. Under that light, information sciences would be the most relevant expertise. They’re the ones who study bibliographies.

To see that the paper ain’t about polar bears per se, here’s how the authors start their abstract:

Increasing surface temperatures, Arctic sea-ice loss, and other evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are acknowledged by every major scientific organization in the world. However, there is a wide gap between this broad scientific consensus and public opinion. Internet blogs have strongly contributed to this consensus gap by fomenting misunderstandings of AGW causes and consequences.

The contrarian worship over SusanC’s concerns illustrates that distorsion point quite well. Any ClimateBall player worth its salt ought to know that SusanC is almost always being picked up to promote the CAGW meme. These proxy debates can be distilled in what I call the Contrarian Matrix:

What a poor argument. The paper is not about plar bears per se, and nor did I claim it is. Can the criticism offered by the paper be objective? Can it be objectively valid? That was the question I posed. If in doubt, read my comment above.

Non-experts cannot objectively criticize other nonexperts for being non-expert. That is all is said in (A).

Non-experts *can* criticize other non-experts, or indeed experts, by directly addressing the claims they make, the science. But as you admit, that was not done in the paper.

…

In order to spare you the effort of going round in circles, which I know you cannot help yourself from, I am aware what the paper’s authors tried to do. I question the objectivity behind such ventures. If Eli Rabbit is questioning Anthony Watts, I have no way of deciding one way or the other, apart from examining their arguments. They are both bloggers and they are arranged along opposite ends of a long-running, highly charged and polarized debate. Neither can, pari passu, claim greater veracity for their positions merely by status. This remains unchanged regardless of whether’s Rabbit’s arguments suddenly appeared at a peer-reviewed venue.

As to what constitutes ‘the mainstream position,’ and whether the authors expended due methologic diligence ascertaining it along with the necessary balances, that is a question that can only be answered by examing the underlying data. I well remember a time before Susan Crockford when Willie Soon had examined the polar bear literature and he was subjected to the same set of attacks as Crockford.

Arguing against someone criticizing a certain position that passes itself off as ‘the mainstream view’ by attacking it for not being ‘mainstream’ – it may be interesting for some, but in scientific terms is circular, tedious, and boring already.

> Can the criticism offered by the paper be objective? Can it be objectively valid?

That’s too questions right there, dear Shub. Add to that your questioning of the authors’ authority on something that is not even the topic of their papers, and you got too many questions on your hand.

Your wall of words doesn’t obfuscate your ad hominem argument, which you can’t even formulate it in a sound manner. You’re not here for the argument, you’re just here to whine about the paper.

You’re in no position to question any kind of objectivity, dear Shub, and I suspect you know it.

Additionally, could you please ensure the whole, unaltered data is released, and not some form of de-identified redacted numbers that strip the identity and name of the blog posts and papers in question?

But no rating numbers that came from the analysis? Plus, the SI is basically just a list of blogs, which all are familiar with. Content analysis requires the actual blog posts that were scored. Would this be made available?

For eg: the IS says ‘www.bishop-hill.net’ This would entirely invalidate a key finding of the paper, if the authors merely traced back blog posts referring to Susan Crockford and then turned around to claim ‘many blogs solely refer to Susan Crockford.’ The exclusivity claim can only stand if these blogs did not refer to other sources of information on polar bears, ever, and never ever discussed ‘mainstream’ sources.

This cannot be queried if the actual posts analysed are not included in the data.

is presumably amongst the blog posts analysed in this paper… yet, it has copious references to mainstream polar bear science, it then links to Susan’s website, for the fuller set of references, which includes your co-authors work..

apologies for posting the long list, of references in those 2 locations alone..

Rode, K. and Regehr, E.V. 2010. Polar bear research in the Chukchi and Bering Seas: A synopsis of 2010 field work. Unpublished report to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior, Anchorage. pdf here.

Looking at the list of blogs in the SI I am struck by a couple things. The first is a duplication in that the Daily Caller appearing twice in the AGW-denying list. Given the limited number of blogs chosen (45) this kind of duplication gives the impression that a detailed quality assurance program was not at the forefront in the analysis.

The second is the inclusion of the Discovery Kids blog and the York blog on the list of “Science-based” blogs. The Discovery Kids blog is primarily a location where children can play science-based apps and the York blog is a blog for a local newspaper that has virtually no science content whatsoever? These two blogs really stick out as not being relevant to a discussion of this sort and further brings into question the quality assurance steps undertaken in the analysis?

Lonny Eachus notes that
“Author’s positions in papers were scored in in same “position space” defined by binary answers to the six statements formulated in the main papers and citation of Dr. Susan Crockford as an expert. ”

Does this mean that people who cite Crockford are deemed deniers? If so, it is small wonder to find that deniers cite Crockford.

This is what lead author Jeff Harvey posted on And Then There’s Physics. This is science?

“Joshua, one of the major aims of the paper was to advise general readers not to take at face value what they read on blogs. Any blogs. Denier blogs generally exude remarkable hubris that they are correct and true arbiters of science. However, as we discussed, it doesn’t hold up when even marginally scrutinized. Unlike you, I don’t believe that most of the denier blogs we included in our analysis care much about the truth when it comes to science, at least with respect to polar bears and their habitat. Instead, they search vigorously to find someone with any credentials who says what they want to hear, blow their credentials up out of all proportion, and then go with that. In other words they enter the discussions with a pre-determined view of the science. As I said to several journalists, I honestly believe that they camouflage their political and evonomic views behind a scientific veneer. And I don’t think this is remotely controversial. Indeed, a number of people including one referee and some journalists argued that our paper is saying what they already knew. So I am genuinely surprised that some people who are critical of climate change deniers and skeptics are unhappy about what we are saying. That said, the response has been mostly positive among my peers, thanking me and the other authors for having the courage to show that blogs which habitually dismiss climate change-related threats to polar bears do not refer to the primary literature but to a blogger that disagrees with the primary litersture, and not through scientific journals but through her blog.”

So, which blog posts at WUWT were analysed, how many mentioned Crockford and polar bears (ie this sole source that is relied upon) and how many just polar bears and other sources. As it has been observed on Twitter there are very many polar bear articles at WUWT with no mention of Crockford..

It would seem unfair to highlight WUWT in the main text, as an example of a using a single source, when, it has many sources not referring to a Crockford..

or were only the articles mentioning Crockford looked at..

please could you provide a list of all the WUWT blog post that were analysed. (The same for the other seem relevant, so it can be checked that blog posts that talked about polar bears at the ‘sceptic, blogs, but did not mentionCrockford, were included in this research/analysis

How many arctic ice WUWT blog posts were analysed, to give the score, and what blog posts were they.

How many polar bear WUWT blog post were analysed, to give the score and what blog posts were they.

As there are hundreds of blog posts referring to these subject, did you analyse all of them?

If a subset, how did you ensure they were a representative subset. Please list the actual WUWT articles analysed to give the score, this would allow anyone to verify the scores.

The same question, could be asked of all the blogs. But WUWT would a good start to check the methodology as it has so many blog posts about Arctic’s ice and polar bears. And is directly referenced in the papers main text

Going back to my original question let’s pick up on Barry’s idea: how many articles were looked at on the York blog (a blog for a local newspaper).

Since it is the blog for a community newspaper I wonder how they found a definitive case on that site. I ask seriously because the York Blog happen to have a number of stories about the “York Polar Bears” who are, not a genera of Ursus but rather are a hockey team in the York region for special needs kids. (http://www.yorkpolarbears.org/). Any search of the York Blog will get lots of hits for “ice” (from ice hockey) and polar bears (from the team name) but few if any for Dr. Crockford (who does not write research papers on special needs hockey teams).

Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial
Jeffrey A. Harvey Daphne van den Berg Jacintha Ellers Remko Kampen Thomas W. Crowther Peter Roessingh Bart Verheggen Rascha J. M. Nuijten Eric Post Stephan Lewandowsky Ian Stirling Meena Balgopal Steven C. Amstrup Michael E. Mann.
–
A star studded line up to attack one person, or should I say woman?
Yes. Why not, it is late 2017 after all. I guess they did the paper before Harvey.
Ragnaar says: “I Googled this: population polar bears Crockford gets hits 2, 3 and 4.”
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The paper is a statement of the obvious. If AGW, ice all melts and polar bears die. Logic impeccable for warmists.
However, If AGW is denied, if ice melt is denied, then polar bears live. Logic impeccable for denialists.
–
Hence the problem, how many polar bear specialists are there? Like one does not get up real close and friendly like gorillas in the mist. How many reports on numbers are there and how reliable?
Ragnaar again
“There’s is a lack of data. I looked at a few maps, and there are large unknown areas.”
–
“A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.”.
All I can think of is that if one extrapolates out 200 bears in 1 square kilometer then the number of Polar bears in the Arctic has been sadly and badly underestimated by everyone..

It is good to see Jeff Harvey put up his perspective on his paper.
A few comments for consideration
The article was never about the science.
It was about the *direction the planet is going in and how to save it.
Consequently the aim of the paper
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“My final point. Our paper was about scientific transparency and integrity ”
“one of the major aims of the paper was to advise general readers not to take at face value what they read on blogs.”
was lost in the execution which resulted in
“Instead they accuse us of ad hominem smears of Susan Crockford and leave it at that. They can dish it out but can’t take it.”
–
“[I] and the other authors had the courage to show that blogs which habitually dismiss climate change-related threats to polar bears do not refer to the primary literature but to a blogger that disagrees with the primary literature, and not through scientific journals but through her blog.”
–
Instead of dismissing a scientist as a mere blogger the intent of the article would have been best achieved by providing the data on Polar Bear numbers, distribution and time changes, real and known firstly extrapolated secondly and then addressing the scientist bloggers extrapolations and conclusions and scientifically, with transparency and clarity, proving her wrong.
Simple.
Can the paper be redone with this aim?

We found a clear separation between the 45 science-based blogs and the 45 science-denier blogs. The two groups took diametrically opposite positions on the “scientific uncertainty” frame—specifically regarding the threats posed by AGW to polar bears and their Arctic-ice habitat. Scientific blogs provided convincing evidence that AGW poses a threat to both, whereas most denier blogs did not (figure 1). Science-based blogs overwhelmingly used the frame of established scientific certainties and supported arguments with the published literature affirming that warming is rapidly reducing seasonal Arctic sea-ice extent and threatening the mid- to longer-term survival of polar bears, whereas those written by deniers did not (figure 2). Science-denier blogs instead focused on the remaining uncertainties regarding the effects of AGW on Arctic ice extent, suggesting that those uncertainties cast doubt on the present and future demographic trends of polar bears.

Approximately 80% of the denier blogs cited here referred to one particular denier blog, Polar Bear Science, by Susan Crockford, as their primary source of discussion and debate on the status of polar bears.

“You don’t have to read far in her material to see that it is full of unsubstantiated statements and personal attacks on scientists, using names like eco-terrorists, fraudsters, green terrorists and scammers,” Amstrup said.

Crockford:
I wrote Motherboard and asked for clarification that this was indeed what Amstrup said because I know it to be a lie. Check for yourself using the search function on my blog, it’s easy to do. I have never used any of those terms to refer to anyone, let alone a fellow scientist.

The way missing values have been handled in the paper has been criticized. However the replacement of NA’s by zero after scaling had only a minor effect and does not alter the final conclusion. If all data points with missing values are simply removed, a much smaller data set of 20 bogs and 41 papers is left. The resulting figures however still shows the same message, albeit with a much reduced sample size. There is no overlap between the positions of half of the blogs (10) with the position of the peer reviewed literature, while the position of the other half of the blogs strongly correlates with the literature. The signal in the data is absolutely clear and the result is robust. Minor variation due to data treatment or data selection do not alter that pattern. The only sensible conclusion is that the denial blogs do not represent what we know about polar bears and sea ice.

You can call me Wee Willie like Judy’s Denizens do, Shub. See if I care. When Richie will stop calling AT, “Wotts,” I’ll reconsider his case. Even you got to admit that his logical misshap calls for some endearment, and that I have no business in promoting his brand.

Here’s the abstract of the only paper I see authored by Lew cited in H17:

Although most experts agree that CO2 emissions are causing anthropogenic global warming (AGW), public concern has been declining. One reason for this decline is the ‘manufacture of doubt’ by political and vested interests, which often challenge the existence of the scientific consensus. The role of perceived consensus in shaping public opinion is therefore of considerable interest: in particular, it is unknown whether consensus determines people’s beliefs causally. It is also unclear whether perception of consensus can override people’s ‘worldviews’, which are known to foster rejection of AGW. Study 1 shows that acceptance of several scientific propositions—from HIV/AIDS to AGW—is captured by a common factor that is correlated with another factor that captures perceived scientific consensus. Study 2 reveals a causal role of perceived consensus by showing that acceptance of AGW increases when consensus is highlighted. Consensus information also neutralizes the effect of worldview.

No, it’s not. There is no rule to be found that states this. And this is quite fortunate, as there are plenty of papers retracted for a reason that is unrelated to important observations/findings in that paper.

“Citing things incorrectly as well as citing incorrect things can be seen as fabrication, and thus misconduct.”

Perhaps you should read what I wrote, Richard: “…this is quite fortunate, as there are plenty of papers retracted for a reason that is unrelated to important observations/findings in that paper.”

Chambers refers to a paper that was retracted because of reasons completely unrelated to the factual accuracy. The citation to that retracted paper would thus not be citing incorrectly, nor citing an incorrect thing.

Also, if citing incorrect things can be seen as fabrication (rather a stretch, but let’s go there anyway), any(*) further citations of your 2009 JEP paper would be fabrication and thus misconduct, no? After all, you’ve openly admitted it was incorrect…

Citing a retracted paper is not a good practice and should have been caught by competent peer review. Marco, You are really arguing a very weak point here. Not sure if it is misconduct but it is just one more thing wrong with Harvey et al that helps strengthen the case for retraction. The paper is just another in the new genre of political attempts to discredit people who you disagree with. That’s not science and Harvey et al should be retracted. Let them publish an op ed in the Guardian if they want.

Willard, I do not think Geoff said the citing retracted articles was in H17, just that an author of the H17 has a history of reciting retracted papers.
Of course I could be wrong and should read harder.

The main thing we found was a clear distinction between blogs, where the group that accepts AGW appears to base their claims on peer-reviewed science, and the group that don’t accept AGW do not. That the whole discussion is now centered around Crockford is a bit of a diversion – that is not the main point of the paper.

In retrospect we could have emphasized her role and background less than we did though, in order to prevent the distraction from the main message. One might argue though that that wouldn’t have made much difference in how the article would have been received. If people strongly dislike a paper’s conclusion, it will be attacked regardless.

> if you consider Harvey et al is a positive and honest contribution to Climate Science, how have I misrepresented you

Because I never said anything that needs to be interpreted as such, golf. My own contributions so far don’t rest on any opinion I may have on H17. Your “still” in “if you still consider” is thus unwarranted, and appears to be just one way to deflect from your mistaken interpretation of “the Team” and to switch onto my beliefs.

As far as I am concerned, H17 was far from perfect, but its main results are more or less trivial. If contrarians believe they can force a retraction, good luck with that. It certainly won’t be because they can refute the fact that contrarians promote FUD frames and defer to SusanC. That’s a no brainer.

What is even less perfect than H17 are the suggestions we witnessed so far in this thread, e.g. that the non-neutrality of the authors affect their conclusion (Shub), that it’s a dispute about polar bears (David Young from the Boeing Company), that SusanC’s not the main author to which Tony’s defer (BarryW), that the conclusion is circular (Richie), or that H17 cites a retracted paper (GeoffC).

These claims (or innuendo in the latter case) are all provably false.

If you have any other question, feel free to ask. They certainly won’t stop me from moving my ClimateBall forward.

Willard, Perhaps the world champion obfuscator and anonymous climate obsessed professor has as usual not said much of substance despite having written more words on this subject than anyone else. It’s a sad commentary on how low this debate has fallen. It’s a shame to waste so many words on such trivialities and such climate ball nonsense. Harvey et al is little more than a political commentary. What more needs to be said? Willard is a partisan and has lots of time to spend on trivialities.

> [H17] is little more than a political commentary. What more needs to be said?

What needs to be said now is that David Young from The Boeing Company is wrong once again. Because, social network analysis. To see why, it suffices to repeat the main point of the paper as expressed by BartV above since he seems so adamant to miss it:

There is a clear separation amongst blogs, where approximately half of the 90 blogs investigated agree with the majority of the scientific literature, whereas other blogs took a position that is diametrically opposed to the scientific conclusions. Most of the blogs in the latter group based their opinions on one and the same source: [SusanC].

Deferring to one and only one source does not bode well for how contrarians are framing the issues of polar bears and sea ice. And that’s notwithstanding that they have little else regarding the Arctic. They usually keep Neven’s alone:

The reasoning is the same as when a crank cites one and only one paper. This point has more to do with epistemics than with politics, but the two are related. Scientific products need to be dissiminated into their respective social networks. By contrast, SusanC’s scholarship (the HI presents her as a “polar bear scholar”) is dissiminated in the Contrarian Matrix. One of her main megaphones is the GWPF, which is at heart an energy think tank created by a monetarist tory.

To “follow the data” and “follow the money” is all well and good, but sometimes following the citations is simpler, cleaner, and more powerful.

If the future ClimateBall episodes are like the ones of the past, we can expect that contrarians will have many things to say about that paper for many years to come. Not that they should provide any kind of constructive criticism. No wonder why only political dummies listen to them.

Perhaps I should close that last loop: only political dummies listen to contrarians when they don’t provide any constructive criticism. It would be unfair to say they never provide anything worthwhile. It would also be foolish, for the best way for ClimateBall to transmute into something positive would be if contrarians worked at least as much as they make people work for them.

Sometimes contrarians do provide something constructive. Witness NicL’s work. But even in that case, H17’s argument would apply. Following the citations should indicate that NicL’s work may be more constructive and more reliable that SusanC’s reinterpretations. Following what he cites favorably would also be interesting.

Judith Curry and Nic Lewis are more reliable sources for constructive criticisms about Climate Science. If Harvey et al 2017 is a good example of your Science deficient ClimateBall, it must be a success that you are proud of.

So lets see, the main point of the paper can be stated in 2 sentences. So then what’s all the commentary about Willard? Thank you for validating my point.

Assuming that this main point is true, what’s the scientific relevance to biology or any other of the hard sciences? But the premise seems to me unlikely. Barry has documented that the “denier” blogs reference many other polar bear authors.

Psychology, Lewindoski’s “field” has a very poor replication track record. I saw a recent paper saying 75% of the result were wrong and that was in a psychology journal with a call to do better. Political bias can naturally find support in a strongly biased field whose literature is of poor quality.

> Assuming that this main point is true, what’s the scientific relevance to biology or any other of the hard sciences?

From his earlier “this looks to me like a scientific dispute about polar bears,” David Young from The Boeing Company now switches to ” “relevance to biology or any other of the hard sciences.” He thus softens his connective (from like to relevant), but restricts the scope of his predication (from science to hard sciences). All this for the dubious assumption that unless scientific results are relevant to biology or any other of the hard sciences, they can only be political.

The main part was an explanation of H17’s main result. This should be obvious to anyone interested in providing constructive criticism to H17. Since David Young from The Boeing Company obviously isn’t here for that kind of thing, no wonder he wonders.

> [Judy and NicL] are more reliable sources for constructive criticisms about Climate Science

No sure what warrants you to say this, golf. I doubt you can put the two in the same box. Following the citations would help clarify my intuition. JamesA provides an entry point of one aspect of NicL’s citation patterns:

[NicL] appears to be arguing primarily on the basis that all work on climate sensitivity is wrong, except his own, and one other team who gets similar results. In reality, all research has limitations, uncertainties and assumptions built in. I certainly agree that estimates based primarily on energy balance considerations (as his are) are important and it’s a useful approach to take, but these estimates are not as unimpeachable or model-free as he claims. Rather, they are based on a highly simplified model that imperfectly represents the climate system.

“Barry has documented that the “denier” blogs reference many other polar bear authors.”

Supposed I would create a blog in which I cite papers by a wide variety of arctic researchers, but only to criticize those papers and even mock the authors. Suppose also I would repeatedly cite, but only very approvingly, Peter Wadhams. In fact, I’d even reblog his blog posts (if he were to have any).

I’d be doing the same as those denier blogs, but you and Barry would say there’s no problem, since I cite all these other arctic researchers…

This website lists most if not all of the best arguments energy think tank money or emeritus status can buy. If you know of an argument I missed, let me know. A URL to the resource would suffice. If it makes the cut, I’ll thank you in my Colophon.

Now, how do you think I could create such Matrix? By having a steady diet of contrarian crap. My first comments at Judy’s date back to the creation of the website in 2009. The very idea of creating the Contrarian Matrix comes from a challenge by GaryM, a Denizen at Judy’s. So I think it’s safe to say that my diet might be more varied than yours.

Please beware your wishes.

For starters, we could look at Judy’s Congressional testimonies, which she says best summarize her views:

– a NAP report to reinforce that we should spend more money on the kind of stuff her own company produces

– Mooney 2005, on the Republican war on science

– Cairney 2016, on how to influence policy-making, a topic dear to Judy

– the March for Science movement

– some newsie on teh Donald

***

As you can see, the citations alone suffice to show that there’s very little scientific content in Judy’s testimony. The little there is goes Curry all the way down. Just like what we can observe from Pielke Senior.

If it is true that this represents her views on AGW, we can safely say that her views are mostly political.

Regarding: “Michael 2, When you cannot know something, I think there are more reliable heuristics to use than tone in order to figure out the credibility of a claim”

Agreed; my comment pertains more to a person’s decision whether to make the effort.

“The main thing we found was a clear distinction between blogs, where the group that accepts AGW appears to base their claims on peer-reviewed science, and the group that don’t accept AGW do not.”

Agreed. I find interesting to explore the forces why it is so sharply divided with essentially nothing in the middle.

I appreciate your careful use of words: “peer-reviewed science”.

Peer review is to science publishing what the college of cardinals is to Catholicism. “a draft of the Compendium was submitted to all the Cardinals and the Presidents of Conferences of Bishops, the vast majority of whom evaluated the text favourably.” (1)

It is a mechanism to prevent drift.

“That the whole discussion is now centered around Crockford is a bit of a diversion – that is not the main point of the paper.”

It is the attention getter. Who would even know of this paper’s existence were it not for that?

“In retrospect we could have emphasized her role and background less than we did though, in order to prevent the distraction from the main message.”

In which case your paper would have vanished into the maelstrom of published but seldom noticed papers. You need a scapegoat, someone to blame. Commercial advertising, for instance, depends heavily upon shame and blame; to escape shame and blame buy this or that product or behave in a certain way.

“If people strongly dislike a paper’s conclusion, it will be attacked regardless.”

No doubt; but it would have been noticed and attacked by fewer people. What the climate science community seems to not comprehend is the utility, the desirability, of being attacked.

A theory is proved by surviving attacks. Phil Jones (presumably) wrote “You just want to find something wrong with it”. He should have embraced the opportunity.

“Consensus matters. If you get a second opinion on your health condition, and it confirms what your specialist said in the first place, your trust in the diagnosis probably increases.”

Indeed it does but is a poor choice of metaphor. You get a second opinion because the first was also an opinion!

Do you go for a second opinion when the x-ray shows a broken bone? No. You can plainly see what is the problem.

Beware of conspiracy theories. The consensus wouldn’t matter if somehow all those scientists had bought into the same conspiracy of wanting to take away your SUV.

That is largely correct. Things independently discovered have considerably more weight than thousands of people echoing one discovery.

William F. Buckley was once asked about a conspiracy of left-wing journalists. He said it was not a conspiracy per se, not organized and no leaders of movement BUT they had generally gone to the same schools, had the same professors, read the same books, had the same patterns of thought. In other words, leftward drift is an emergent property of “groupthink”.

“Try that line of argument in a court of law against a pyromaniac, by saying that forest fires have always happened naturally; it won’t fly.”

The prosecutor has a burden to show that THIS fire was human caused. In the USA, anyway, “reasonable doubt” is all it takes to obtain acquittal in a criminal case. That is the substance of Naomi Oreskes’ book title, Merchants of Doubt.

It is a tall order, nearly impossible, to overcome doubt when you lack proof. A heliocentric solar system is now almost universally believed but remarkably difficult to prove.

“Confusion of cause and effect. A consensus emerged as a result of the strength of the accumulated evidence, not the other way around.”

Maybe the second ring outward emerges in this manner. The innermost ring, the Attractor, has a First Cause. It chooses the evidence to accumulate and the interpretations thereof, thus assuring the eventual development of a consensus. Its early mistakes were making predictions not far enough in the future thus allowing for some failures.

Out of 11,000 or so papers, 72 of them indisputably assert anthropogenic global warming, 3 assert not AGW. Keep those 75 and discard all the rest, they are not relevant to “the science” but are useful adjuncts to consensus messaging.

“A tricky one is temperature and CO2: They influence each other both ways.”

True of many climate factors. The evolution of consensus simultaneously creates its own disconsensus which persuades the consensus to try harder, the disconsensus responds, and you have a nearly perfect binary separation of belief.

“Think in terms of likelihood. How likely is the previous proposition of a mass conspiracy amongst stubborn scientists?”

Very likely, depending on how one defines “conspiracy” (I take a relaxed view that includes “groupthink”). It is clear that disconsensus is punished in a variety of ways; many small conspiracies rather than one big one. It is normal human behavior in my opinion: In-groups and out-groups.

“How likely is it that scientists have for decades overlooked this little finding that supposedly shakes the foundations of a relatively well established science?”

Decades is about right: Heliocentric solar system, continental drift.

“Think in terms of risk. What if we take measures against global warming and it turns out less bad than expected?”

Risk analysis is a risky metaphor because it is nearly certain that other people will weigh the risk factors very differently. You present people with possible doom for everyone in the future but then you are competing with religion also predicting doom, or politicians predicting doom because of {Clinton; Trump}.

“Expertise. It is not unreasonable to trust a climate scientist more than a doctor when it concerns climate.”

Proving the expertise of the doctor takes a few weeks; proving the expertise of a climatologist takes 30 years, perhaps twice that long since the first correct guess might have been lucky.

“The credibility of a source also depends on their motives, both on economic and ideological grounds”

I would have made this the top item; it is certainly one of the top items used to cast doubt on your opponent while downplaying the same forces in your own camp.

Willard Says: “http://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/ This website lists most if not all of the best arguments energy…”

Seems to have changed format. I clicked on “all” and it spun on memegenerator and eventually I abandoned the attempt. I will suggest to Golf Charlie that some of the arguments are pretty good; know when to use them. Don’t expect to “win” anything.

I’ve never been entirely sure what is the “ball” of climateball but I think it is “belief”. It is a game played between believers of one thing versus believers of its opposition. It is pointless to play this game with an actual scientist working in his or her specialty. In that rare instance you instead have opportunity to get information direct from its source and be grateful (IMO).

I’ve published in journals that require detailed authorship declarations which are published along with the paper, in journals that also require sometimes extensive disclosure forms (which are sometimes published, but not always), and in journals which don’t even ask about any of this (the majority), but where some do point to the authorship guidelines of the ICMJE.

So far I’ve not encountered a single situation where those authorship declarations were helpful. Only disclosure forms have been helpful, but also there only very limited.

@pepijn
Neither the paper nor its supplementary material mention jittering. The code has not been released. So I do not know whether they applied jittering and fail to mention it, or whether they messed up and are looking for an excuse.

I do know that the authors, by releasing half of their data and none of their code, are in violation of the code of conduct of research institutes and universities in the Netherlands.

Why should this information be hidden from readers by the publisher? Isn’t it helpful to any reader?

You answered

Richard, I don’t care about authorship declarations.

and expanded on that. So, I accept, there is one reader who says authorship declarations would not have been helpful to him in the past – with the unstated implication that they would never be in the future.

This single statement doesn’t remotely support the argument that the information should be hidden by publishers, on the basis that no reader would ever find them useful. Why earth should the publishers hide this information? The case of a controversial paper with fourteen co-authors from different disciplines certainly raises the stakes. But I can’t see why the information shouldn’t be made public as a matter of course, as it is for example in the new paper by Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Lüning on what the pre-industrial baseline for temperature should be for the IPCC et al.

“The case of a controversial paper with fourteen co-authors from different disciplines certainly raises the stakes.”

Why? Why does it matter so much to you to know exactly who did/wrote what? I have not seen any argument for this. Maybe you can explain why this *is* such important knowledge.

You can start with that Lüning and Vahrenholt paper: why is it *important* to know that Lüning studied the paleoclimate estimates, and not Vahrenholt? What important information do you derive from this?

Harvey et al 2017 (with the supporting data) is a useful reference guide. It may be used by academics, politicians, scientists etc, perhaps even Professional Liability Insurers, who would like to charge extra for bad risks.

I think Jeff Harvey’s cv confirms his own double standards and hypocrisy.

https://nioo.knaw.nl/nl/employees/jeff-harvey%20%20
“….. in an attempt to stem the relentless flow of disinformation emanating from a number of surprisingly well-endowed think tanks and public relations firms that are distorting science to support a political agenda and pre-determined worldview on environmental issues.”

> As noted above there are reasons to believe that Harvey et al’s main result is wrong.

David Young from The Boeing Company’s handwaving has little merit. Here is the main result:

We found a clear separation between the 45 science-based blogs and the 45 science-denier blogs. The two groups took diametrically opposite positions on the “scientific uncertainty” frame—specifically regarding the threats posed by AGW to polar bears and their Arctic-ice habitat. Scientific blogs provided convincing evidence that AGW poses a threat to both, whereas most denier blogs did not (figure 1). Science-based blogs overwhelmingly used the frame of established scientific certainties and supported arguments with the published literature affirming that warming is rapidly reducing seasonal Arctic sea-ice extent and threatening the mid- to longer-term survival of polar bears, whereas those written by deniers did not (figure 2). Science-denier blogs instead focused on the remaining uncertainties regarding the effects of AGW on Arctic ice extent, suggesting that those uncertainties cast doubt on the present and future demographic trends of polar bears.

None of the objection raised so far challenges this main result.

***

> Given the track in cognitive psychology, its probably that its wrong.

Since willard, a philosopher, is claiming expertise in areas he knows little about, I though I would quote from some of the references I gave. From Lewindowsky’s page:

“I am a cognitive scientist with an interest in computational modeling. That is, I try to understand how the mind works by writing computer simulations of our memory and decision-making processes. Recently, I have become interested in how people update their memories if things they believe turn out to be false. This has led me to examine the persistence of misinformation in society, and how myths and misinformation can spread. I have become particularly interested in the variables that determine whether or not people accept scientific evidence, for example surrounding vaccinations or climate science.”

At the least one would have to say Harvey’s main point is about social psychology. And then the real killer is that psychology is much less reliable than even other flawed fields of science. From Nature

“Positive results in psychology can behave like rumours: easy to release but hard to dispel. They dominate most journals, which strive to present new, exciting research. Meanwhile, attempts to replicate those studies, especially when the findings are negative, go unpublished, languishing in personal file drawers or circulating in conversations around the water cooler. “There are some experiments that everyone knows don’t replicate, but this knowledge doesn’t get into the literature,” says Wagenmakers. The publication barrier can be chilling, he adds. “I’ve seen students spending their entire PhD period trying to replicate a phenomenon, failing, and quitting academia because they had nothing to show for their time.”

These problems occur throughout the sciences, but psychology has a number of deeply entrenched cultural norms that exacerbate them. It has become common practice, for example, to tweak experimental designs in ways that practically guarantee positive results. And once positive results are published, few researchers replicate the experiment exactly, instead carrying out ‘conceptual replications’ that test similar hypotheses using different methods. This practice, say critics, builds a house of cards on potentially shaky foundations.”

The real issue here is one of honesty and directness. Real people pay real money for results that are more often than not wrong. And the gullible are taken in. That’s shameful, but denial is common among those with a political point of view but no real knowledge of the problems within science. And Willard definitely has a political point of view he advocates relentlessly albeit with an attention to obfuscatory detail that any theologian would be proud of.

David Young from The Boeing Company can’t substantiate the relevance of his Given the track in cognitive psychology, its [sic.] probably that its wrong by quoting something from the H17. H17’s main claim rests on basic social-network analysis, which has very little to do about the social psychology targetted his citations.

Interestingly, his diversion is spelled using the same frame as SusanC and the contrarian blogring: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD).

FUD, Serengeti strategy, MbW all apply, Willard. Just look how golf charlie makes the Polar Bear Science Group, a section of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, “Amstrup’s http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/“. Uhm…no. Amstrup is just one member of 35 in total.

And apparently it is well funded, too, suggests golf charlie, and working towards a pre-determined world view. What that world view is, golf charlie does not tell us.

What is interesting in this whole discussion is the apparent unwillingness of the pseudoskeptics to admit they are primarily relying on a single source – but not without also willingly telling everyone that those darn publishing scientists are not to be trusted, so of course they rely on this tiny minority of what they consider “trusted sources”, who are of course free of any bias.

I think the pseudoskeptics know that Harvey et al is right: for them, whenever polar bears are discussed, Susan Crockford is the person to listen to. But pointing that out in the open is inconvenient, because at the same time they like to believe they are being more scientific than aaaaaalll those other scientists who draw opposite conclusions. It’s a form of cognitive dissonance that they don’t like being pointed out. And thus Harvey et al MbW.

For David Young that means the paper must be wrong, because a psychologist is involved, and psychology has a replicability problem, and therefore Harvey et al MbW. The perfect circular argument, but it soothes his cognitive dissonance.

“When Jeffrey Harvey published a scientific paper at the end of November he knew there was going to be pushback. But he didn’t expect to be called complicit in “academic rape” or that his boss would receive a letter asking for Harvey’s dismissal.

“I knew the shit would hit the fan,” said Harvey, who is an ecologist with the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and a professor at the University of Amsterdam. “I knew it would come back this way, but I didn’t know how vitriolic it would be.”

The emotional topic was polar bears.

…

The researchers assert that Crockford doesn’t have any scientific expertise on polar bears and that her blog posts often use “partial research outcomes and portrays them as contrary to the documented effects of [anthropogenic global warming] on sea ice or polar bears — supporting a ‘scientific uncertainty’ frame.”

Crockford vehemently disagrees. She asked BioScience for a retraction and said the researchers maliciously maligned her reputation and misrepresented her background.

Scott Collins, editor of the journal, said he stands by the scientific process used to vet this and other articles for publication. He intends to keep the study available online. A spokeswoman for the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, where Harvey works, said the organization is “convinced of the scientific quality and merits of our scientist.”

Scott Collins and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology stand by the “Science”, unfortunately, no one apart from the gullible can see it.

“FUD, Serengeti strategy, MbW all apply, Willard. Just look how golf charlie makes the Polar Bear Science Group, a section of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, “Amstrup’s http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/“. Uhm…no. Amstrup is just one member of 35 in total.

And apparently it is well funded, too, suggests golf charlie, and working towards a pre-determined world view. What that world view is, golf charlie does not tell us.

What is interesting in this whole discussion is the apparent unwillingness of the pseudoskeptics to admit they are primarily relying on a single source ”

Marco,
What is your single source for all this pseudo psychology? Lewandowsky?

Are Polar Bears in danger or at risk? Please quote your source if it is not controlled by Stirling or Amstrup or Derocher.

You seem to be persuaded by pseudoscience, without sceptism. Not everyone is quite so gullible.

No, I claim, with Paul Matthews, that it is required to be provided to the publishers. You don’t, as far as I know, dispute this. But you claim that the publishers can always legitimately withhold it from the readers because in one instance you don’t want to see it. So I am asking you for proof that it would never, in any instance, be valuable to readers. And I am doing so because I think your position is absolutely ridiculous. Of course, given they require it of the authors, the publisher should make it known, as they have in the case of Vahrenholt and Lüning. A secondary question is whether you would criticise the publishers in that instance. You have painted yourself into a corner here. Please do continue.

“But you claim that the publishers can always legitimately withhold it from the readers because in one instance you don’t want to see it”

No, the publisher can withhold it, period. Whether I want to see it or not. I just don’t care that BioScience does or doesn’t divulge it (or any publisher who would demand this information), because I see little use of those authorship declarations. That Frontiers does (and so do PLoS), whereas most other journals don’t (I’m still trying to find an Elsevier journal that demands author contribution statements, for example) is totally their choice.

*You*, however, keep claiming it is important information, and especially for a supposedly controversial paper, but don’t want to explain why it is so important for you to see those authorship declarations.

I think RomanM at Climate Audit (the gentleman who dissected Anderegg, Prall et al) perhaps puts it best: “The data and the statistical aspects of this paper are lame lipstick for a propaganda attack on everyone who does not share the beliefs of the authors. It is sad that cursory peer review persists in the climate change world allowing incompetent papers to pass through over and over again.”

Marco, it does seem bizarre that you should mention conspiracy ideation. Why does it take fourteen authors to attack one? Is that how you think a consensus is properly fabricated?

Judges, Juries, Scientists etc tend to take a dim view of withholding evidence. Any Litigant, especially a vexatious one, should know that. If you are not involved with Harvey et al 2017, this is not your problem.

Considering that what RomanM considers “superfluous” is the main point of H17, thanking him for his statistical concerns ought to be enough. Or perhaps not. His criteria offers nothing new in terms of scientific research on polar bears might be sufficient to exclude everything SusanC ever published on polar bears:

[I]t is true that these peer-reviewed papers [SusanC’s] are not the result of field research on polar bears and most do not focus exclusively on polar bears […]

I have been reading around a bit on the denial sites. What strikes me is the enormous amount of comments that point to presumed fatal flaws in the analysis of the data in the denial by proxy paper, but absolutely nothing is said about the *consequences* of those presumed errors. “The message is always “This is really really bad” and the expected next sentence “if we correct this error we get the following result…” is always missing.

A good example is the application of “jitter” (moving points slightly to make overlapping points visible.) Some people have created a graph without jitter, and make a big point of the fact that there are actually just a few positions instead of many nuanced ones. No one even seems to realise that the message of the new figure is *exactly* the same as the original. I tried to post a comment that made that point, but was rejected with “duplicated comment, it looks as though you have already said that”. Oh well…

“We know that Jeff and Daphne collected the data”…
followed by…
“We also know that no one was in charge of […] data collection.”

Make up yer mind, will ya?

“I guess an honest declaration of author contribution would reveal that many of other 11 authors really were a rent-a-mob.”

Any declaration of author contribution will not soothe anyone’s mind, regardless of what it says. You’ll just declare it “dishonest” when it doesn’t say what you have already decided is the truth, that much is clear.

Sigh, more conspiracy ideation. If it were just one person who wrote this paper, you’ll still be claiming Amstrup, Derocher and Stirling are controlling things, that much is clear from your argumentation so far.

@Richard
Thanks for illustrating my point so nicely: the PCA is depicted as really bad, the next step, something like “A bubble graph shows a different picture that tells us that….” is completely missing.

I have not seen ONE argument ANYWHERE that go’s beyond “this is so wrong”.
I find that truly amazing.

@Richard
The scripts are up, did you actually read the code? Everything you need is there. In fact the analysis is so “elementary” that the raw data and the description in the paper would allow a full replication, without any problem. We provide the scripts, and it turns out nobody reads them. Go do your homework, and come back when you have an analysis to show.
I am done here for now.

@RichardTol
Based on your email from yesterday about the PCA, I was under the impression you had the script and they were already on Dryad.
Apparently that is still being worked on. However, the script are also available here:

Peter, the paper says ‘hits’ were collected for each of the classification points. Without mention of the specific pages from the websites listed, the data is incomplete.

You say: “What strikes me is the enormous amount of comments that point to presumed fatal flaws in the analysis of the data in the denial by proxy paper, but absolutely nothing is said about the *consequences* of those presumed errors.”

You must have seen my analysis of the methodologic flaw in the paper. What did you think? Not a fatal flaw?

The consequence cannot be estimated without release of data. Additionally, if the methodology is fatally flawed, it is not necessary to perform alternative analyses to demonstrate this.

I doubt anyone believes Crockford is pulling the strings on all those websites. She’s just the preferred source when ‘polar bear demise’ needs to be denied.

“Where it matters is independent replication. Using your data and code I had better get exactly the same results or one of us has a faulty computer.”

That’s a really poor replication. I know of a few papers where I will likely get the exact same result using their data and code. And yet, those papers are wrong. They use the wrong data and/or the wrong code (to be a little more specific, I know they don’t do an absolutely necessary correction to the data, and I know they use an equation that makes several assumptions that do not apply).

Independent replication is best performed by doing your own data collection and making your own code.

“Co-author Peter Roessingh, researcher at the UvA Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (UvA-IBED) in the research department Evolution & Population Biology, contributed to the statistical analysis. He explains: ‘Although it seems almost silly to apply statistics to a dataset with such a clear signal as this, we thought it was important to stay as objective as possible in this highly ‘polarised’ field. A large fraction of the information available to the general public has no scientific basis. The main message of the paper therefore is that scientists should get more vocal in the public domain and directly counter misinformation.’ “

Marco writes, in reference to [“We know that Jeff and Daphne collected the data”… followed by… “We also know that no one was in charge of […] data collection.”]

“Make up yer mind, will ya?”

These statements are not rival. The first sentence denotes who collected data, the second declares that no one was “in charge” of collecting data, that is to say, tellling everyone what data to collect. Each collector is presumably free to collect whatever data is available without direction from On High.

Peter Roessingh writes “I have been reading around a bit on the denial sites.”

As do I, but I have not seen much denial other than perhaps denial of imminent polar bear extinction.

“absolutely nothing is said about the *consequences* of those presumed errors.”

“Denial” seems to be an implicit consequence.

“if we correct this error we get the following result…” is always missing.

If the error is missing data then there is no correction. If the error is improper application of principle components analysis then you may get a different outcome; but not assuredly so.

“A good example is the application of jitter”

Seems like a pretty good idea to me. In my experience most people don’t do “nuance” anyway; seems you also lumpen all sites into exactly two categories, one of which is “denial site”. Still, where jitter is applied there ought to be some mention of it so that the presence of a cluster of nearly-identical outcomes is not mistaken for the actuality of many identical outcomes (or, rotate the graph and make it 3-D so that your stacked points can be seen to be a stack spread out on Z but having identical X and Y).

Marco writes “What that world view is, golf charlie does not tell us.”

Neither, apparently, does anyone else. Peter, for instance, visits denial sites. What are they denying? It is not written, nor does it need to be. The whole point of this paper we are discussing is that there are exactly two world views that a person can have; and one must have one or the other; so it isn’t necessary to explain either of them, but basically Polar Bears {are, are not} in danger of imminent extinction. Pick one of the choices. What then? Well, that’s a topic for a different day.

> I have a doubt anyone argues that particular point and I wonder that anyone is *paid* to discover the obvious.

I don’t think it’s that obvious to those who aren’t that well-versed in ClimateBall, M2. That it is obvious doesn’t imply that it’s superfluous, whatever RomanM could mean by that in his Reviewer 2 rant. In any event, there’s no need to wonder if SusanC is *paid* to discover contrarian citations:

Coming in with a lower profile and a lower monthly retainer ($750 a month) are Anthony Lupo, and Canadian “Terrestrial Animal” specialists [SusanC] (the dog expert from the University of Victoria) and [MitchT], a contract lecturer at the Lakehead University who has argued that polar bears are in no danger from climate change.

desmog got that information from the phishing scam artist Peter Gleick. Information that was so mundane Peter had to forge a saucy-sounding memo to sex up the details. This was used by desmog, Greenpeace and sundry outlets to smear anyone involved.

You wouldn’t say people shouldn’t be paid for their effort, would you willard? Or would you say they have their opinions because they were paid?

That is a common human condition, probably normal. Why do you care about the things you care about? It’s a product of the limbic system that shoots out little squirts of endorphins when you see something it wants you to prefer, and cortisol in stress situations so you won’t like it.

But why you prefer whatever you prefer cannot be known because the driving force exists beneath your conscious mind and is inaccessible. Perhaps you had a stuffed polar bear when you were a toddler. I had a kangaroo but that doesn’t seem to endear me to kangaroos.

Why do any humans prefer polar bears? They see you as food. Some people admire power and stamina. Perhaps you like fluffy and white. How about all of these at the same time; the fluffy white strong polar bear. Icon of “The Golden Compass”; hvidbjornen.

As you have seen right here today, some people place great emphasis on largely irrelevant factors, Red Herrings, such as who is paying for a study or anti-study. That is a fallacy of course; a thing is factual or it is not, but beyond the simple matter of true factoids is the careful selection of which facts to present to the public, neglecting, perhaps deliberately, important facts that would change one’s perception of the situation.

I tend not to believe anything just because someone makes a claim. I accept the utility of an adversarial system; someone makes a claim, someone else challenges it. If a thing is scientific it is repeatable and can be tested. So bring on the challenges.

I admit I’m incapable of explaining how helpful authorship declarations would be in a particular case if I’m not allowed to see them.

However, the publishers rule that they should be provided. You have proved incapable of explaining why they should then withhold them from readers like me, making me incapable of explaining why they are or aren’t important in that case!

I think there’s an easy solution. You get on to the publishers to demand they publish this information. And I will then explain if it’s been helpful in this case. Do we have a deal?

I am unfamiliar with Lucia’s; heard the name now and then. My blogreading time is somewhat limited so I visit WUWT and ATTP and not much else.

Perhaps you were referring to Marco’s inability or unwillingness to declare what is being denied on denier blogs leaving it to me to guess at it. But there must be some sort of objective criteria for it to become datapoints.

Perhaps I was referring to RichardD’s “I admit I’m incapable of explaining how helpful authorship declarations would be in a particular case if I’m not allowed to see them,” M2. You know, what I quoted and commented. A comment to which you responded.

Obtuse obduracy should really be left at Lucia’s. You should go pay her a visit. You’ll feel at home. Lots of dictionary quotes over there too.

RichardD, no deal. I don’t see why I should demand the release of information that the Publisher obviously does not release for any of its papers, and where the person demanding it can only say that non-release “[makes] me incapable of explaining why they are or aren’t important in that case”.

In other words, you cannot say whether it is relevant information, but *may* be able to say so when it is released. That’s not an argument for me. It’s not up to me to provide an argument for the Publisher to release authorship declarations, especially when I myself cannot find a reason to put those declarations to any use!

However, I offered you an opportunity to convince me. As a start, you could explain to me why it is helpful to know that Lüning studied the paleoclimate estimates, and not Vahrenholz. You could also look at a few other authorship declarations in various journals, and tell me what is so helpful in them. You can then tell me why it would be helpful to get something similar for the Harvey et al paper.

So far, it looks to me more like a fishing expedition. Starting with an attempt to claim Harvey et al violated a Publisher requirement (which turned out to be a dud), and now some faint hope there could perhaps be a word somewhere in the authorship declaration that could be used to throw mud at a wall in the dire hope it sticks.

“So what did we find? There is a clear separation amongst blogs, where approximately half of the 90 blogs investigated agree with the majority of the scientific literature, whereas other blogs took a position that is diametrically opposed to the scientific conclusions. Most of the blogs in the latter group based their opinions on one and the same source: Susan Crockford.”

For those interested in Polar Bears, it might be worth taking the time to read what Susan Cockford actually writes, rather than rely on the Peer Reviewed Harvey et al 2017 and the “majority of the scientific literature” for their consensus view.

Marco writes: “So far, it looks to me more like a fishing expedition.”

Yes; although we might not have the same “it” in mind. All fishing expeditions start out with the goal in mind. This particular expedition seeks to quantify the fish and presumes they exist to be found. With millions of blogs to choose from, you can likely find opposing points of view of just about anything, and maybe even in similar numbers. Consider “flat earth”. How many blogs propose that the earth is flat versus how many blogs propose the earth is round? I suspect very few people publish “round earth” blogs, giving the few “flat earth” blogs disproportionate representation.

What does it mean? By itself, almost nothing. It means that among the people that write anything at all about polar bears, half think they are at risk of relatively imminent extinction, the other half think they are not; but these halves are not probably representative samples of the human race.

The half that thinks polar bears are at risk of extinction are, in my opinion, probably the audience for the new Jurassic World movie to “save the dinosaurs” except that as some have pointed out; they are genetically engineered and not really pure dinosaurs. There’s no particular need to save them (or create them in the first place).

The “it” in Marco’s “it looks to me more like a fishing expedition” clearly refers to something like “an argument for the Publisher to release authorship declarations.” All the paragraphs in Marco’s comment refers to that question. That’s stuff Lucia’s is made of, M2. Go there. You’ll fit almost as well as Brave Brandon once did. They welcome Freedom Fighters with open arms there. I’m sure SteveF will.

Also, you might like to note that H17 is the very opposite of a fishing expedition. That’s why you would admit that nobody disputed its main conclusion. Let’s quote it again:

We found a clear separation between the 45 science-based blogs and the 45 science-denier blogs. The two groups took diametrically opposite positions on the “scientific uncertainty” frame—specifically regarding the threats posed by AGW to polar bears and their Arctic-ice habitat. Scientific blogs provided convincing evidence that AGW poses a threat to both, whereas most denier blogs did not (figure 1). Science-based blogs overwhelmingly used the frame of established scientific certainties and supported arguments with the published literature affirming that warming is rapidly reducing seasonal Arctic sea-ice extent and threatening the mid- to longer-term survival of polar bears, whereas those written by deniers did not (figure 2). Science-denier blogs instead focused on the remaining uncertainties regarding the effects of AGW on Arctic ice extent, suggesting that those uncertainties cast doubt on the present and future demographic trends of polar bears.

Approximately 80% of the denier blogs cited here referred to one particular denier blog, Polar Bear Science, by Susan Crockford, as their primary source of discussion and debate on the status of polar bears.

Willard writes: “That’s stuff Lucia’s is made of, M2. Go there. You’ll fit almost as well as Brave Brandon once did.”

I have no herd instinct, no particular need to “fit” and not much to learn from people whose cups are filled with what I already have.

I respect your knowledge, literacy and logic; so maybe I have been missing something.

“Also, you might like to note that H17 is the very opposite of a fishing expedition. That’s why you would admit that nobody disputed its main conclusion.”

A fishing expedition knows what they expect to catch and where to catch it. The guides probably find it a bit tedious; the only uncertainty is the exact weight of the halibut (or the exact number of blogs having identical consensus beliefs).

But I take your meaning; a “fishing expedition” also means to hunt for something hidden for the purpose of embarrassing your opponent.

But the exact nature of what would be embarrassing depends on your audience. You and I probably share potential embarrassment over misspelling and bad logic, unless of course either was intentional.

I find it interesting when one’s opponent defines the mission of one’s own blogs, choosing some bit of trivia (straw-man argument) or red herring (distraction) so we argue about certainty rather than failed predictions. As I understand it, Susan’s paper isn’t about certainty; it is about a prediction of 30 percent polar bear population reduction that appears not to have happened. I have little doubt that the situation is more complicated than the mainstream media portrays; some stress likely exists because of GW and some of that GW is probably A. But this is confounded by reduced hunting and improved methods (presumably) of survey.

“Approximately 80% of the denier blogs cited here referred to one particular denier blog, Polar Bear Science, by Susan Crockford, as their primary source of discussion and debate on the status of polar bears.”

We found a clear separation between the 45 science-based blogs and the 45 science-denier blogs. The two groups took diametrically opposite positions on the “scientific uncertainty” frame—specifically regarding the threats posed by AGW to polar bears and their Arctic-ice habitat. Scientific blogs provided convincing evidence that AGW poses a threat to both, whereas most denier blogs did not (figure 1). Science-based blogs overwhelmingly used the frame of established scientific certainties and supported arguments with the published literature affirming that warming is rapidly reducing seasonal Arctic sea-ice extent and threatening the mid- to longer-term survival of polar bears, whereas those written by deniers did not (figure 2). Science-denier blogs instead focused on the remaining uncertainties regarding the effects of AGW on Arctic ice extent, suggesting that those uncertainties cast doubt on the present and future demographic trends of polar bears.

Approximately 80% of the denier blogs cited here referred to one particular denier blog, Polar Bear Science, by Susan Crockford, as their primary source of discussion and debate on the status of polar bears.

So far, I have yet to see any contrarian argument against it. We could say that the conclusion is contrarian proof. What defyies logic would be to try to raise concerns about a paper that has a contrarian-proof conclusion.

Willard writes “A fishing expedition is an informal, pejorative term for a non-specific search for information, especially incriminating information.”

Pretty much what I wrote: “also means to hunt for something hidden for the purpose of embarrassing your opponent.”

Or as Dr. Phil Jones puts it, “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”

Indeed. And if nothing can be found wrong with it, then what? Who knows. It didn’t play that way. But it seems to me that data and methods that accept and survive challenge are enhanced by such challenges.

Willard writes “So far, I have yet to see any contrarian argument against it.”

Congratulations.

“We could say that the conclusion is contrarian proof.”

Good heavens. People still believe the earth is flat. Nothing is contrarian proof. In fact, some people (my father, for one) will switch sides instantly so as to maintain a contrarian point of view from mine in the case I happen to agree with him.

But as arguments go, this paper is on solid ground observing the obvious. It is not clear what meaning is assigned to it. Can it be discerned? Indeed it can:

“They can also begin to encourage initiatives that empower citizen participation in scientific research”

Baby steps.

“Moreover, scientists need to more effectively use Internet-based social media to their full advantage in order to turn the tide in the battle for public opinion.”

How’s that going? Write a blog, purify it, wait for the readers. Do you want to debate? Probably not. It takes a great deal of patience to gently bend wood into a piece of furniture; proceed too quickly and it simply breaks or its resistance is too strong.

Practice your technique on a flat-earther. You must make him question his own understanding and find his own proofs. Or at least that is how it seems to me and is what works on my kind.

“In this vein, the prominence and importance of blogs such as Real Climate show how climate scientists can successfully enter the blogosphere.”

Except for the fact that a non-specific search for information is the opposite of doing a paper about a phenomenon any ClimateBall player can confirm, i.e. that the contrarian blogs that peddle FUD about polar bears and sea ice mainly cite SusanC, a fishing expedition is exactly what you wrote, M2. So you got everything right for RichardD’s request, and only missed the active ingredient for H17. In other words, H17 doesn’t have to fish for the information. It’s right up there, for everyone to see. No FOIA or hacking required.

A blogring that mostly cites a polar bear “scholar” (as per the Heartland Institute’s blurb) who admits herself not doing any field research on polar bears for the sake of more contrarian FUD looks exactly like what it sounds.

M2, you are being hopelessly naïve here. Allow me to provide you with an alternative hypothesis regarding Phil Jones’ statement: he refers to the fact that some people (in this case the person he responded to) likely will use motivated reasoning to find “something wrong with” the data or data analysis, *regardless of whether this really is true or not*, and *regardless of whether this has a material impact on the conclusion*.

Pat Franks has made a large fuss about something he believes is “wrong” with how models treat uncertainty. Many others, including statisticians/mathematicians, say he’s wrong. It doesn’t matter – the story is now spread there is “something wrong with” how models treat uncertainty, so you can safely dismiss it. The repeated complaints about single stations and the impact of homogenization on these local records is another example: big changes mean there is “something wrong with it”. And you know what? Sometimes indeed there is “something wrong with it”. But in the big picture for which the homogenized data is used, it means very little to nothing. But the story has now been spread: there is “something wrong with it”, and thus it is safe to doubt there is any significant warming at all.

Richard Tol tries this same approach using his claim that the selection of papers is “not representative”. Although he has now admitted that his complaint about papers by Thiemann being excluded was due to him needing glasses, it is illustrative to consider the situation where this is actually true: no papers by Thiemann were included.

This could be:
a) not an error – Thiemann’s papers actually are not relevant to the polar bear-sea ice connection, or are not even papers, but rather news items or conference proceeding abstracts or editorials
b) a minor error – Thiemann’s papers are relevant, but essentially come to the same conclusions as the vast majority of papers that were selected, and thus the conclusion of Harvey et al would remain the same or even be strengthened (even MORE papers pointing in one direction regarding polar bears and the impact of sea ice on their survival)
c) a major error – Thiemann’s papers are relevant, and actually support the position taken by the ‘denier blogs’, and thus the conclusion of Harvey et al is wrong.

NONE of these three options has been explored by Richard Tol. Rather, Richard found a way to “find something wrong with” the selection of papers by analyzing a subset of the data and ignoring obvious issues (see point a) above) with doing such an analysis. It’s a form of p-hacking.

Oh, and note also how Richard Tol helps Richard Drake to just “find something wrong with” the authorship declaration, regardless of what it says: it must be a lie. It’s just easier to be more specific when you get the declaration, e.g. “Mann said he contributed to the data analysis and writing the paper, but that’s probably a lie”.

Willard, the underlying message from Harvey et al 2017, is that if you seek reliable information about Polar Bears, the underfunded Crockford represents best value.

The unintended consequences of Harvey et al 2017 include exposing the Confirmation Bias that exists within the Blogosphere towards the views of the 97% Consensus, no matter how flawed the Peer Approval and spelling.

Your use of Climate(Science Wrecking)Ball is a clear indicator that a paper has some “difficulties”, but you are welcome to try and salvage something if the dust ever settles.

Marco writes well and says: “he refers to the fact that some people likely will use motivated reasoning to find ‘something wrong with’ the data or data analysis, *regardless of whether this really is true or not*, and *regardless of whether this has a material impact on the conclusion*.”

Agreed, and I have not argued otherwise. My argument is that this is a small risk so as to avoid the much bigger risk of seeming to be hiding something, which confirms not only that there IS something wrong with it, but that Dr. Jones already knows what it is. It creates a sense of conspiracy where most likely there is none, at least not a grand conspiracy.

The “Rules of Civil Procedure” in the United States allows inference of malfeasance if one cannot produce emails relevant to a civil case since the technology exists to be able to do so. Failing to do so can be considered willful and suggests that the non-delivered emails could change the outcome of the case.

That there are people willing to pore over tens of thousands of emails looking for mischief is a curious fact of life. Let them have their hobby because if you don’t, inference is created that you are hiding something and a creative person can declare almost anything as the thing being hidden.

“the story is now spread there is ‘something wrong with’ how models treat uncertainty, so you can safely dismiss it.”

Or unsafely dismiss it. Many, maybe most people in my opinion face many risks every day. Few argue that humans have no, as in zero, impact on the environment. What matters is whether the benefit is seen as necessary; benefits such as reliable electricity.

But really you are targeting legislatures, who must consider risks and how to apportion public funds extorted from the public. The more funds are being demanded the better must be proof of need.

“The repeated complaints about single stations and the impact of homogenization on these local records is another example: big changes mean there is ‘something wrong with it’.”

Well of course there’s something wrong with it but when data is altered it’s tainted, full stop. It would not be admissible in a court of law and apparently not entirely admissible in the minds of many readers.

I am reminded of The Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s “1984” that adjusts the PAST to “make true” the present.

“But in the big picture for which the homogenized data is used, it means very little to nothing.”

The manipulations seem to reliably produce modern warming by suppressing past temperatures (more often than not). This may be a legitimate outcome but it creates doubt. Its legitimacy is in research, trying to glean a “signal” from the noise. But if you think you found a signal, going to the public with that news becomes tainted if the data was massaged in any way.

“Richard Tol tries this same approach using his claim that the selection of papers is ‘not representative’.”

Nor is it ever likely to be perfectly representative to all persons whose personal methods of determining representation will likely vary. The choice of 45 warmist blogs and 45 denier blogs does not seem representative either; neither of the blogosphere or of humanity generally.

It’s an exercise and your mileage will vary; maybe by a little, maybe by a lot, if you were to do it.

“c) a major error – Thiemann’s papers are relevant, and actually support the position taken by the ‘denier blogs’, and thus the conclusion of Harvey et al is wrong.”

Harvey’s conclusion is that denier blogs cite Dr. Crawford. That is easily tested and shown to be true. By itself it seems to have no meaning, since believer blogs cite Dr. Mann. You choose your science authority just as you would choose your religious authority: Personal preferences often with non-obvious factors.

You sure know how to find ways to distance yourself from what you’re trying to say, golf. Leading questions. Legal strawmen threatening. Begging questions. Mind probing. Counterfactual thinking. Now it’s “the underlying message.” How should we call that – Ouija boarding?

It’s easier to find the explicit message in H17. Some call it an abstract:

Increasing surface temperatures, Arctic sea-ice loss, and other evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are acknowledged by every major scientific organization in the world. However, there is a wide gap between this broad scientific consensus and public opinion. Internet blogs have strongly contributed to this consensus gap by fomenting misunderstandings of AGW causes and consequences. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have become a “poster species” for AGW, making them a target of those denying AGW evidence. Here, focusing on Arctic sea ice and polar bears, we show that blogs that deny or downplay AGW disregard the overwhelming scientific evidence of Arctic sea-ice loss and polar bear vulnerability. By denying the impacts of AGW on polar bears, bloggers aim to cast doubt on other established ecological consequences of AGW, aggravating the consensus gap. To counter misinformation and reduce this gap, scientists should directly engage the public in the media and blogosphere.

Richie did that with C13 too. Before that with Ackermann. In between with many other researchers. The overall quality of his contribution matters little, e.g.:

In recent testimony economist Richard Tol claims that a study finding a 97% consensus in the academic literature on the human contribution to climate change is flawed. The original study was based on a team of volunteers rating around 12000 scientific abstracts.

Tol argues that there is an 18.5% error rate in the rating process and estimates that 6.7% of abstract ratings are still in error after reconciliation, implying that 11.8% were fixed during reconciliation. Tol applies the same changes in rating which were produced by the reconciliation step to the additional 6.7% of abstracts, decreasing the consensus percentage from 97% to 91%.

If correction of 6.7% of the ratings reduces the consensus by 6%, then the earlier reconciliation of 11.8% of the ratings is likely to have reduced the consensus by at least a similar amount. However given that the consensus after reconciliation is 97%, this would appear to be impossible.

Not that this quality matters much. What matters is that we’re on a blog, this is a ClimateBall episode, and we are witnessing AGW contrarianism by proxy.

By now, every ClimateBall players should expect Richie’s fishing expeditions.

“Harvey’s conclusion is that denier blogs cite Dr. Crawford. That is easily tested and shown to be true. By itself it seems to have no meaning, since believer blogs cite Dr. Mann.”

By itself it indeed has no meaning. The context matters. “Denier blogs” primarily (positively) refer to Crockford whenever polar bears are discussed. “Believer blogs” do NOT cite Mann in this context, but rather a variety of scientific papers when discussing polar bears. They DO cite Mann for other issues, but I doubt you can find any example where “Believer blogs” almost exclusively (positively) cite Mann on a topic instead of a variety of scientific papers.

“My argument is that this is a small risk so as to avoid the much bigger risk of seeming to be hiding something, which confirms not only that there IS something wrong with it, but that Dr. Jones already knows what it is. It creates a sense of conspiracy where most likely there is none, at least not a grand conspiracy.”

My argument is that scientists are busy enough to also spend time (IPR, confidentiality agreements) on vexatious data requests. Especially when he then explains where you can get most of the data. My argument is also that even *if* all the data is provided…you will not suppress any conspiracy ideation! Remember: something must be wrong with it, whether you give the data or not.

Willard writes: “H17 doesn’t have to fish for the information. It’s right up there, for everyone to see.”

Indeed. Next week it will be the discovery of gravity.

“admits herself not doing any field research on polar bears for the sake of more contrarian FUD looks exactly like what it sounds.”

Red herrings.

This is a claim that invites contrarians to start looking at all the discussions everywhere on polar bears and demand the same level of scrutiny. Anyone who has not done field research on polar bears, and bases their words on their own research only, shut up, remain silent, write nothing.

Modern astronomers almost never sit at the eyepiece of a telescope. Someone else operates the telescope and usually it is a camera, not a human observer at the focal point. The astronomer is many thousands of miles away and studies the photographs.

So long as there’s data available, *anyone* can do research! A thousand people can do research on the data collected by a single person that might not even know, or care, what is the eventual purpose of the data.

To whom it may concern
It’s odd. I came to this discussion very late – only a few hours ago, and I began assiduously reading from the beginning. Soon I realized I was skim-reading Willard, then skipping whole paragraphs of his. Soon, the reason for my inattention became evident – it was all about obfuscation, not addressing the point but twisting the message, going down blind alleys. Soon the technique was identified – climateball. My hat’s off to you Willard, you are a world champion.

What I do not understand is that Susan Crockford does not deny that the Arctic is warming and summer ice declining (even faster than AGW models predict) yet is being attacked by AGW supporters. Her “crime” is not to accept that polar bears are adversely affected by poor summer ice conditions. Instead she supports the opinions of the same experts before they joined the climate change bandwagon – namely polar bears can survive a summer-long fast but are affected adversely by thick ice conditions during the preceding spring. I’m not even sure that many “sceptical (not denier surely?)” blogs that link to hers realize this.

So can anyone explain exactly why the authors linked their “analysis” so tightly to an unbridled attack on Crockford? It seems to me to be counterproductive to the scientific reasoning but, as has been noted previously, might have everything to getting the paper publicity. In which case it is despicable.

Singer beneath bridges compliments Willard: “My hat’s off to you Willard, you are a world champion.”

He’s the best at what he does, sort of an inverse Turing test. He (if indeed it is a “he”) does not leak information. No quirks or tics. I doubt I have seen such discipline in any other person.

“So can anyone explain exactly why the authors linked their analysis so tightly to an unbridled attack on Crockford?”

Crawford is (relatively) incidental to this, it could have been anyone or no one.

The attack is on the existence of “consensus gap” and the principle causes of it is contrary voices (blogs) which can coalesce into a secondary and rival consensus. It is the nature of consensus to extend human tendencies into itself; just as one human wants supremacy over other humans, so too does one consensus feel endangered by rival consensus. [a similar phenomenon exists in business and corporations; “survival of the fittest”]

As it happens, humans have developed techniques for forming consensus and dissolving opposing consensus. Some of these techniques have been codified:

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

The enemy needs a name and a face; it doesn’t even need to be a real person (in George Orwell’s “1984”, Goldstein is the enemy but it is never made clear whether there is, in the story, really such a person).

Marco writes “They DO cite Mann for other issues, but I doubt you can find any example where Believer blogs almost exclusively (positively) cite Mann on a topic instead of a variety of scientific papers.”

That is a distinction with scarcely a difference; if I cite MBH98, am I citing Michael Mann or a paper he wrote? Does it matter?

Perhaps we can find a few person cites in SkS: Google search inurl:skepticalscience.com “michael mann”
About 645 results (quotes around “michael mann”).

That’s rather a lot of mentioning of Michael Mann on ONE blog.

I wonder about their interest in the opposition?
inurl:skepticalscience.com “anthony watts”
About 5,340 results

Wow. That looks like an obsession.

“My argument is that scientists are busy enough to also spend time (IPR, confidentiality agreements) on vexatious data requests.”

Directors do not do science. They do politics. It was his job to deal with vexatious requests.

“That is a distinction with scarcely a difference; if I cite MBH98, am I citing Michael Mann or a paper he wrote? Does it matter? ”

M2, are you really this obtuse? It’s not about citing a paper or mentioning a person. It’s about *solely* relying on a *single* source on a topic.

“Directors do not do science. They do politics. It was his job to deal with vexatious requests.”

Unfortunately, making blanket statements does not make them true. In my experience, having worked with several “directors” in an academic setting, I happen to know they mostly do science. The politics isn’t much different from that of any other scientist: getting additional funding, contacts with media, and making sure the other scientists under your guidance can do their work. You just have more official responsibility.

Ah, and another decides to go for conspiracy ideation, instead of realizing that old studies on challenges to polar bears, done before arctic sea ice was clearly declining, do not reflect new insights obtained from the time that arctic sea ice *is* clearly declining.

Science progresses, some people stay stuck in the past. Hence the repeat arguments about “CO2 is saturated”, “it was warmer in the 1930s”, “Greenland was green”, “There were vineyards in England”, etc. etc.

Marco “Science progresses, some people stay stuck in the past. Hence the repeat arguments about “CO2 is saturated”, “it was warmer in the 1930s”, “Greenland was green”, “There were vineyards in England”, etc. etc.”

You forgot to mention Polar Bears. Is that because their numbers are increasing? That is what Crockford has been saying for years.

Why, thank you, Singer. Your judgment might be a bit hasty, though. Late to the party, newish nickname, and all.

The answer to your rhetorical question is quite simple:

Blogs on which man-made climate change and its impacts are downplayed are far removed from the scientific literature. That is the conclusion of a new article in Bioscience in which a variety of blogs was compared with the scientific literature regarding the shrinking Arctic sea ice and the impact on polar bears.

I can understand that you could have missed it. You had so much to read in a short time, it’s easy to miss BartV’s lede. By your logic, one could even argue that he obfuscated it.

Marco. “the truths of history are that new challenges to the wellbeing of flora and fauna are not negated by challenges that were described in the past.”

Those afired of future changes compound their problems by distorting or eliminating the past. History should be your friend not a circus mirror. For the biota past climates have been much worse and better in the past. Only for human Goldilockes are changes both insufferable and our fault.

Willard
“Your judgment might be a bit hasty, though. Late to the party, newish nickname, and all.
Think again oh ignorami
Your judgement on what is scientific and scientific literature is somewhat suspect. Ivory towers (of which I am familiar ) do not even have a monopoly although they strive to achieve it using fair means or foul (H17 is well behind the foul line).
You were so eager to convince me to your side that you “forgot” to answer my question. Why does H17 pick on Susan when she accepts Arctic warming even greater than proponents of AGW modelling do? My question was NOT rhetorical.

I do not believe you. It may well be that some blogs create uncertainty as a side effect of offering different points of view.

But I have never seen (or have no memory of seeing) attempts by contrarian blogs to create fear; whereas creating fear is perhaps tactic number one on nearly all CAGW blogs and semi-scientific publications such as National Geographic and Scientific American.

This is why those blogs and publications fail. Fear is ephemeral; powerful but short lived.

I will suggest for your otherwise excellent argumentation to remove the “F” from FUD and just go with UD and then we don’t have much to dispute.

No to both. Science does nothing. People do things. All people advance 1000 milliseconds per second in time. Those that don’t become invisible (see “The Langoliers”).

“Hence the repeat arguments about CO2 is saturated”

I have no idea why this resurfaces but I suspect it is new people not the same people making the same argument. It is easy enough to dispel this particular argument; if CO2 is saturated (100 percent of the atmosphere) we’d all be DEAD.

While some instance of this are doubtless trolls, it seems appropriate to answer each seriously since other people hopefully are reading this blog or that one.

“it was warmer in the 1930s”

So it seems, depending on where you were. To be sure, the United States was having a rough time of it, known as the “dust bowl” era or days or something.

“Greenland was green”

Hence its name.

“There were vineyards in England”

So it seems. It is mildly interesting and possibly useful to study history; probably unwise to totally ignore it while keeping in mind that history is written by people and adjusted as needed by whoever has the power to do that sort of thing.

No Turing test are needed to realize that denying this won’t win you any contrarians any brownie point. Just let me give you another chance. In return, doubling down adds more virtual chips to this ClimateBall exchange.

Willard. “The reason why H17 focused on SusanC is because contrarian blogs adopted her as their Polar Bear and Sea Ice champion.”
Well indeed I did miss this as an answer to my question. The reason I did this is quite simple: I could not believe you would offer such a defence of H17. You believe H17 attacked Susan Crockford because other organizations chose to champion her; nothing she did, only what others did. Spectacular defence.
Also it doesn’t actually address the specifics of my question does it? But then it’s a little technical isn’t it? Perhaps you should seek advice before not answering my question again.
As to the ad hom mode, “mirror,mirror on the wall…”

Bart Verheggen
may I compliment you upon your blog. A blog that hitherto I have not delved within. It appears tolerant of all sides of an argument. It is a pleasure to find a blog where all sides are indeed represented and moderation is minimal. I shall be visiting more frequently.

Obtuse is not a physical thing that can be measured by instruments but rather takes place only in the observer’s mind. Thus as many observers as exist produces as many different judgments each of which is valid in the domain in which it exists.

“It’s not about citing a paper or mentioning a person. It’s about *solely* relying on a *single* source on a topic.”

That’s better. Careful writing can narrow the field of choices to exactly the thing you wish to target while making it seem you aren’t actually targeting something specific (that is, making it personal).

Your attempt to make hay out of this gets nowhere with me. It is the nature of things for one person to discover and others to cite the discoverer. So it has always been that very often the discoverer of scientific truth is an outcast among his peers: Germ theory, continental drift, relativity, evolution. Being first or only is neither proof nor disproof of being correct but it *does* suggest independence, which to me is usually a good thing.

It is indeed quite incredible that BartV’s lede could answer your leading question. Even more incredible that it could be answered by reading H17’s abstract. I mean, who would ever suspect that H17 focused on SusanC because contrarian blogs made her their Polar Bear and Sea Ice Champion, just as prescribed by the Hulme’s Doctrine?

Sometimes, ClimateBall just works in mysterious ways, isn’t it?

I’m glad that you finally understood what I was saying. For a moment I almost thought you were playing dumb. If you like appeals to incredulity, you might also like when they go up
to eleven:

That’s about the way I see it as well. It is about consensus. The rising of a new consensus is threatening to the existing consensus.

Let us consider President Barack Obama for a moment for there is a type of parallel. Conspiracists think that for all these many years Barack Obama was chosen from the moment of his birth to become President. That’s a huge stretch; it implies that other such persons are already in the pipeline right now.

It is more likely that at some point in his life people noticed he had potential to become important; maybe even President although I suspect that was a long shot, but not impossible. Dream big!

So back to polar bears. SusanC has been studying them for a long time along with other things; having nothing to do with climate per se but just how they evolved from brown bears. This means that her studying is relatively uncontaminated by the leftwing agenda that contaminates climate science generally.

So basically the public has two choices with regard to understanding polar bears:

1. The dominant field-research based reports which tend to be politically motivated and thus not completely reliable, or

2. SusanC’s unmotivated (politically) reports which aren’t based on her own field research and thus might also be not completely reliable.

Which you pick is pretty easy to guess. If you happen to share the political motivation of #1 that’s what you pick. If you avoid that political motivation then your choice is #2 because there is no #3.

SusanC is not the champion, not even “a” champion. As the only credible, non-political voice in this whole affair she is thrust into a spotlight by people looking for a “second opinion” on the doctor’s diagnosis (figuratively speaking).

Must she be attacked? Yes; for however it came to be, she is now the voice of “Bears are okay for now” thinking. As Willard says, “the only losing move is not to play.” The Empire must strike back.

Michael 2, the position of an entity in a debate is partly structural, and therefore inevitable. When the boy pointed out the emperor has no clothes his voice becomes powerful, even though he’s just one person and he’s just a boy. The lesson is that if emperors did not want mere boys to become powerful voices they ought to not go naked. Don’t blame the messenger.

golf charlie, funnily enough that page doesn’t seem to be there any more.

Before I forget, Bart–Merry Christmas to you and yours!

On with the discussion, then.

1. What nobody has disputed is that among the authors of this paper are two gentleman who have produced a prodigious number of papers on polar bears. Those papers come to decidedly different conclusions than Dr.Crockford about the near and long-term health of the species.

2. Because their disagreement is related to climate change the dispute carried over into the blogosphere, with appropriate side choosing by different blogs.

3. One of the conceits of this paper is that the authors feel qualified to label publications as equivalent to denying the Holocaust occurred. This might possibly be taken as evidence that the authors are just a bit biased towards a certain outcome.

4. The two prolific authors who also participated in this exercise constitute the bulk of the consensus position. Weblogs that link to them are considered ‘science-supporting.’ Weblogs that link to Dr. Crockford’s work are considered ‘Denialister Spawns of Satan,’ or some such appellation. Again, it is easy to see how this might inspire criticism from the contrarians among us, or at least another paper from Dr. Lewandowsky (I can suggest a title–‘Re-Ursus Furry.’)

4. The charged nature of the climate change debate is a sufficient predictor of which side of the dispute between Crockford, Sterling and little in the way of mathematics is required to identify the different groups in advance. In any case, argumentation is assuredly circular–citing scientists who support one’s position being common to either side.

5. It is pernicious to use political labeling as an apparent result of a scientific investigation. Calling your opponents deniers does more than open yourself up to accusations of bias. It also denigrates and perhaps defames those you criticize. There has been a concerted effort for 12 years to associate those who dispute the consensus with those who denied the Holocaust occurred. A good portion of the conversation about the use of the word has occurred on this weblog. As you do not define the term it is just name-calling. As you characterized the weblogs prior to analyzing the polar bear issue, it amounts to using insults as confirmation bias.

6. I run (ran–it is mostly inactive) a weblog called The Lukewarmer’s Way. Would you, Bart (or did you) classify the blog as a denier blog? I ask because I discussed polar bears on occasion there. When I did so, I certainly tried to offer both sides of the issue for examination. One example from 2015: “The ‘consensus’ view is here, a skeptical view here and what may be a synthesis view here. Readers are warned that I personally believe each of those views are more political than anything else.” (https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/polar-bears-antarctic-ice-and-the-silence-of-the-lambs/)

7. As a lukewarmer, my reaction to the conclusion of your paper is pretty much ‘duh.’ Contrarians link to a contrarian position expressed by a scientist. Consensus supporters link to positions expressed by consensus scientists. The consensus group is larger than the contrarian group and is published more widely. Hence the consensus weblogs have a wider range of publications to refer to.

8. It appears clear that the decisions you reached in the formulation of your study prejudiced your examination, that the body of publications you researched is too small to support the types of mathematical analysis you attempted and that the paper suffers mightily as a result.

9. The fact that political supporters of your political point of view have arrived to insult their opponents is unsurprising, but hardly edifying.

Bart, I have harshly criticized this paper on your weblog and elsewhere. I have been (and remain) dumbfounded that someone I respect as much as I respect you could be associated with it. It eerily reminds me of Stephen Schneider’s association with Anderegg, Prall et al PNAS 2010. I would like you, if you have time, to explain your thinking about why you participated in this exercise.

– The term “denier” in this context does not refer to the holocaust. It refers to what is known as science denialism, e.g. as described in this article:https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
“the employment of rhetorical arguments to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists. (…)
Denialism is a process that employs some or all of five characteristic elements in a concerted way.”

I.e. it refers to a certain type of argumentation and was first used in the context of health sciences (e.g. anti-vaxxers, etc).

– What you claim in 4 is not quite right. Blogs were first divided into science-based or denier/contrarian based on their stance towards human-induced global warming in general, and then they were assessed based on the 6 different statements on sea ice and polar bears.

– With 7 you have a point. Our results are hardly surprising to those who have been paying attention to, or participated in the climate debate, which of course includes you. But showing the strong distinction between contrarian blogs and science-based blogs is still useful we think, since the former often claim (either explicitly or implicitly) that they base themselves on science, or in some cases even that they’re the new Galileo, yet we have shown that they don’t base themselves on the peer-reviewed literature at all; their viewpoint is totally at odd with the peer-reviewed literature. It’s not surprising that they don’t like that to be shown, but if your response is “duh, I already knew that”, then why are you so upset about the article? Is it really just because of the language used?

I don’t plan on continuing to actively discuss things on my blog over the next days, so if I don’t respond immediately, enjoy the holidays!

@Bart
Diethelm and McKee (2009) do not discuss the roots and associations of the term “denial”. This is no surprise as they are not qualified to do so, and the European Journal of Public Health is not known for publishing first-rate articles on culture and language.

Diethelm and McKee do write that “[t]his phenomenon has led some to draw a historical parallel with the holocaust, another area where the evidence is overwhelming but where a few commentators have
continued to sow doubt. All are seen as part of a larger phenomenon of denialism.”

In other words, your source argues, albeit in passing, the exact opposite of what you claim it does.

The term ‘denier’ in a climate context is a dog whistle to label the target as akin to those who deny the Holocaust occurred.

A lot of sanctimonious justification has occurred to allow creeps to continue to use it. But there is no doubt about the provenance of the corruption of the term and no excuse for it appearing in a scientific paper.

James Hoggan of Deep Climate started pushing it in 2005 and it gained quick acceptance, starting with Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe and spreading like the virus it is since then.

As if have frequently written on this weblog and elsewhere, it is hate speech hiding behind pseudo-scientific claptrap which amounts usually to the same sad justifications whites used to retain the right to use the n word, the k word, the s word, ad nauseum.

It’s getting tedious seeing people make objections like:
“That term is used for Holocaust denialists, so you can’t use that term here”.
That argument makes no sense.

What makes Holocaust denialists “denialists” (or “deniers”) is that they don’t change their position in response to strong evidence against their position (this usually also comes with a refusal to accept an evidence-based consensus, along a number of unsound tactics for evading evidence and manufacturing false support for their position). That is the same feature that makes AIDS denialists “deniers”, young Earth creationists “denialists”, flat-Earthers “deniers”, anti-vaxxers “denialists”, and so on. Those are instances of science denialism; Holocaust denialists are deniers in history, not science. Different fields, same basic phenomenon.

There might be a dispute on the use of terms like “denier” and “denialist” because some people are new to the ongoing discussion of “denialism” in science and philosophy. So when these new people hear the term “denialism”, they think of Holocaust denialism, instead of the forms of denialism discussed in science.

But that’s not what I and many other scientists think of when we hear terms like “denier” and “denialism”. Instead I think of AIDS denialism, which is way more pernicious (in my opinion) than Holocaust denialism. And I think of the people who were too cowardly to call out that AIDS denialism for what it was, leading to unnecessary suffering (and often death) for hundreds of thousands of people.

So can people please get over their emotional association of “denialism”/”denier” with Holocaust denialism, and actually address what the terms mean in the context of science denialism? One’s personal emotional response to a term has little relevance to the term’s use in science or philosophy, anymore than a creationist’s discomfort with the term “ape” implies that evolutionary biologists should stop calling humans apes.

Also, there’s already a body of literature (both peer-reviewed and not peer-reviewed) on the use of terms like “denier” and “denialist” to discuss varieties of science denialism. For example:

“AIDS denialism and public health practice”
Alexey Karetnikov’s “Commentary: Questioning the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis: 30 Years of Dissent”
“Science denial: a guide for scientists”
“HIV denial in the Internet era”
“Still crazy after all these years: The challenge of AIDS denialism for science”
“How the growth of denialism undermines public health”
“Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?”
“Science denialism: Evolution and climate change”
“The ethics of belief, cognition, and climate change pseudoskepticism: Implications for public discourse”
“Science and the public: Debate, denial, and skepticism”
“Manufactured scientific controversy: Science, rhetoric, and public debate”
“Science denial as a form of pseudoscience”
“Science denial and the science classroom”
“Debating global warming in media discussion forums: Strategies enacted by “persistent deniers” and implications for schooling”
“Sceptics and deniers of climate change not to be confused”